How Noss Head Saved Thousands of Londoners
How Noss Head managed to save thousands of Londoners from Hitlers deadly Vengence Weapons
In 1944, a young 19 year old airman called Dougie Duncan, a butcher’s boy from Perth, was working as one of the 36 strong Signals Section that operated the top secret Y Service station at Noss Head.
The station which operated on a three shift cycle to enable it to listen 24 hours a day for German Luftwaffe Enigma coded signals primarily in Norway, Denmark and the low countries, but the station could also pick up signals from Northern France as well.
The signals which were litteral jibberish to the airmen listening to them would be written down and sent on to Blechley Park, along with a pinpointed direction that the signals were transmitted from where they would be decyphered for useful information.
One shift that Dougie was on duty listening carefully for German transmissions he picked up a new signal which turned out to be a tell-tale repeat signal of V V V V.
Whilst this signal meant nothing to Dougie and his colleagues, they had hit the jackpot when it was sent to Bletchley Park. It turns out this signal was being transmitted by V-1 Flying Bombs (Doodlebugs) on test flights from a top secret underground V-1 test facility in Northern France.
After listening intently to this new signal the team at Noss Head were able to pinpoint the location of the transmission with the help of other Y-Service stations around the country.
Once the information was passed to the RAF the test site was destroyed before V-1s could be fired at London, severley setting back Hitlers use of the weapons.
Whilst V-1s ultimately started falling on London on the 13th of June 1944, goodness knows how many lives were saved by preventing them from reigning down their terror on London much earlier that year.
