page_title: Chain Home
section_title: CH today
hierarchical_section_title: Chain Home / Development / CH today
caption_attribution_description: English: Chain Home transmitter tower at Stenigot This is the last remaining CH radar mast at what used to be RAF Stenigot. It dates from about 1940 and is now a listed building.
context_page_description: Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the official name Air Ministry Experimental Station Type 1 in 1940, the radar units themselves were also known as Chain Home for most of their life. Chain Home was the first early warning radar network in the world, and the first military radar system to reach operational status. Its effect on the outcome of the war made it one of the most powerful weapons of what is today known as the "Wizard War".
  In late 1934, the Tizard Committee asked radio expert Robert Watson-Watt to comment on the repeated claims of radio death rays and reports suggesting Germany had built some sort of radio weapon. His assistant, Arnold Wilkins, demonstrated that a death ray was impossible but suggested radio could be used for long-range detection. In February 1935, a demonstration was arranged by placing a receiver near a BBC shortwave transmitter and flying an aircraft around the area; an oscilloscope connected to the receiver showed a pattern from the aircraft's reflection.
context_section_description: Some of the steel transmitter towers remain, although the wooden receiver towers have all been demolished. The remaining towers have various new uses and in some cases are now protected as a listed building by order of English Heritage. One such 360-foot-high (110 m) transmitter tower can now be found at the BAE Systems facility at Great Baddow in Essex on the former Marconi Research Centre site. It originally stood at RAF Canewdon in Essex and was moved to Great Baddow in 1956. This is the only surviving Chain Home tower still in its original, unmodified form with cantilever platforms at 50 ft, 200 ft and 360 ft, and in 2019 was given a Grade II listed status. Swingate transmitting station in Kent (originally AMES 04 Dover) has two original towers (three until 2010) which are used for microwave relay; the towers lost their platforms in the 1970s. RAF Stenigot in Lincolnshire has another, almost complete tower, less its top platforms and used for training aerial erectors.
  The only original Chain Home site which is still used as a military radar station is RAF Staxton Wold in Yorkshire, although there are no remnants of the 1937 equipment as it was completely cleared and remodelled for the Rotor replacement, the Linesman/Mediator system, in 1964.
  The 240-foot timber receiver towers were some of the tallest wooden structures ever built in Britain. Two of these wooden towers were still standing in 1955, at Hayscastle Cross. Unlike the transmitter tower pictured here, those at Hayscastle Cross were guyed.
  The wooden reception towers at Stoke Holy Cross were demolished in 1960.
  Wilkins would later repeat the Daventry Experiment for the 1977 BBC Television series The Secret War episode "To See For a Hundred Miles".
caption: Stenigot Chain Home radar tower.
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