46
Down the hole on surveillance.

At no time, to my knowledge, was there any break in night surveillance work, not even when the changeover from 537
SU to 210
SU took place. Neither can I
remember any instance, when I was in charge of a surveillance watch, when the
radar was, even temporarily, taken off the air through malfunction or for
maintenance. Occasionally, though, a technician would, during his routine rounds,
find a valve that had gone 'soft' in one of the consoles or equipment racks. In this
case he would seek permission to take that particular
PPI or Height Display out of
service for the few minutes it took him to replace the valve. In these rare instances
the aircraft plotter or operator would temporarily move to another console, his
work otherwise uninterrupted. Even during normal day watches our surveillance
work continued and was interrupted only during periods of routine maintenance.

I was responsible for maintaining the 'B' Flight watchkeeping roster, so can positively state that, subject to leave and other commitments, night watches came
round every five weeks or so. Controllers who were still under training were not
qualified for night watchkeeping duties. Also, sickness could have its effects on the
frequency of one's watches. On checking the gaps in my Log Book, it appears that
during 1957, I did maybe eleven such watches, with two in October.

There was only one instance when I was alone on nights that I was allocated fighters. I shall describe the episode fully a little later on. However, when on nights,
and doing the evening watch, it was often the case that a full (day) watch would also
be present when there was night flying control work.
1 If there was enough trade for
us, then I could be allocated fighters and do a session or two. All these sessions have
already been mentioned in a previous chapter, only a few of which were recorded in
my Log Book as 'surveillance control'.

Most evening and night watches were boring in the extreme. Even when things became frenetic, as they sometimes did, we had orders not to write anything down
other than in the plotter's logs, and to say nothing to anyone who did not need to
know. Discussion of such events, within hearing range of those who didn't already
know, was strictly taboo.

It is for this reason that I am wholly reliant on my memory for what I am about to relate in the rest of this piece; some events, therefore may be recorded in the
wrong order, but I hope at least to give an overall impression of night watch work
and tell of some of the, as far as I am aware, unrecorded happenings in which I was
involved. I shall not describe events on a watch by watch basis.

As did any Officer
i/c night watch I had complete responsibility for the whole tech site during my watch. All personnel had their orders. The radar technicians and
the Service Police in the Guardroom all knew what to do without any special
attention from me. Only if there was an unusual technical problem did the
NCO i/c
the Radar Office bother me, or me him. I had my security checks to do, as already
described, otherwise my attentions could be almost entirely devoted to the
surveillance crew who were usually about a dozen in number. As a watch crew, we
were responsible to 83 Group for passing plots to them of all aircraft and any other
phenomena observed during the watch. Watches were organised so that all
watchkeepers (except me) had rest periods. No-one could stare at a
PPI or other
display the whole time.
________________________________________
1 In this case the day watch on night flying duty in the evening would already have done the morning watch.
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