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Martin Briscoe: the Skipness bombing range

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A recent article about Skipness got me thinking about the Bombing Range arrow and quadrant tower there. I took a couple of pictures of them some years ago and have been meaning to get back to have a proper look.  I was going to go down a couple of weeks ago but the sky looked very grey down that way so I had a look around some other places, I tried last weekend and had great weather all day.

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The Fleet Air Arm bombing range was offshore with floating targets. It was part of Royal Naval Air Station Machrihanish.

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There is a large concrete arrow to the east of the ruin of St Brendan’s Chapel at Skipness, south east of the Castle. There were two white lines at the base of the arrow that were used for signalling to the aircraft – these would have been hinged so they could either be made visible or hidden. There were also two white circles at the side of the arrow and another beyond the tip of the arrow.  These also were hinged and could signal simple messages:

  • All clear for bombing – carry on.
  • Wait for further signal – do not bomb.
  • Release smoke puff.
  • You are bombing the wrong target.
  • Cease bombing – go home

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The ranges had at least two quadrant towers, one either side of an arrow.  Skipness had one about 1,450 yards west of the arrow, above the road just before entering the village.  There used to be another east of the concrete arrow but there does not appear to be any trace of that one now.

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There is a booklet written by one of the Wrens who served as a Bomb Range Marker at Skipness and she describes their work and life there ['Home on the Range'].

The quadrant tower was of brick and was two storeys high.

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Upstairs there was a large window [optical glass] where there was a sighting tube mounted on a quadrant – hence the name of the building. This would be used to determine the angle from the quadrant that the practice bomb fell. By using the angles from both quadrants, the accuracy of the pilot could be determined.

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Downstairs was the Dive Screen. This is described as a ‘glass blackboard like thing on an easel’.  The BRM [Bomb Range Marker] followed the diving aircraft by looking through an eye hole and marking it with a piece of chalk. This made it possible to say at what height the bomb was dropped.

The Wrens’ Quarters were in the grounds of Skipness House, near the beach. More Wrens were sent there and some rooms had to be commandeered inside Skipness House – but they had no contact with the people living there. There were about forty BRMs, two cooks and two drivers as well as a Wren officer [daughter of the Chief of Clan MacDougall].

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There were four or five Fleet Air Arm bombing ranges on Kintyre, all part of RNAS Machrihanish:

  • Skipness.
  • Crossaig – between Claonaig and Carradale.
  • Ballure – this was the largest with a target built on an offshore rock, with a ship that sank in shallow waters used as a target.  On land there are several structures, two arrows and a cross that rocket projectiles were fired at.
  • Bellochantuy – little is known about this or whether anything survives.
  • Also Killean / Cruachan – but this might have been considered part of Ballure.

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There were also a number of ranges around the airfield but to our knowledge there were no land features as they were either towed splash targets or buoys moored offshore for shooting at with guns and rockets. These are almost impossible to spot on aerial photographs unless you have low level vertical photography of the target area or better still a plan of the ranges.

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I got a lot of information from the online Airfield Information Exchange Forum.

There are a lot of people very interested in the subject so any local information on these sites will be of great interest.

Martin Briscoe

Note: all photographs accompanying this article are © Martin Briscoe and are reproduced here with permission.


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