purbeck radar

...this afternoon, we drove over to Worth Matravers and did another of our favourite strolls along the track to the coastguard lookout station on St Aldhelm's Head and back by way of West Man and Winspit Bottom.

There are many points of interest on this walk, including the tiny St Aldhelm's Chapel on the headland and the remains of the extensive stone quarries at Winspit, but the focus of today's blip is the memorial, which was unveiled by Sir Bernard Lovell on 27th October 2001. Research and development of what we now know as RADAR was moved from Suffolk to Worth Matravers in Dorset in May 1940 as it was further away from German reach. There is a fascinating article on the whole story here.

As a piece of side history, in May 1963, Sir Bernard Lovell visited the Soviet tracking station in Evpatoria, Crimea, where he alleges he was the subject of an assassination attempt (all to be revealled in his autobiography). There is a fabulous RT-70 radiotelescope at what is now the Centre for Deep Space Communications in Evpatoria. I know it well and have many photos of it because Evpatoria, Crimea is where my beautiful wife, Elena, is from...