What and where were

[RichardB]

New one on me, see what you can find, other towns/cities had 'em too, Crewe, Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, Portsmouth ....

[dunsbyowl1867]

New one on me, see what you can find, other towns/cities had 'em too, Crewe, Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, Portsmouth ....

Weren't they decoy devices to try and misdirect German bombers?

[Guest tsavo]

Weren't they decoy devices to try and misdirect German bombers?

Yes they were. Try this site for info:

http://www.aviationmuseum.net/decoys.htm

[dobberd]

A little bit more local info here,

"Burbage played two roles in World War 2. One of the first bomber decoys in the

country was built on Houndkirk Moor to deflect bombing raids from Sheffield. This

comprised an elaborate arrangement of lights and fires contained in baskets and

trenches that were designed to replicate Sheffield’s railway marshalling yards as

seen from the air at night. There was an observation post which was used towards

the end of the War as the location for an experimental mobile radar station. A

number of military units used Burbage Valley for training between 1941 and 1945.

Eye witnesses suggest that these were various units that included British and

Canadian troops."

[Guest pfn]

More info on Starfish and other WWII decoy sites. It's fascinating reading!

Following the Battle of Britain it was decided to protect our cities and airfields by extending the use of decoys that would lure the Luftwaffe away from their intended targets.

The operation was a combined operations enterprise, although the RAF received the lions share of the work. The decoy scheme HQ was located at Shepperton Film Studios under a Col. John Turner. The film studios were used to creating a world of make believe, so they were the obvious people to design and help set up the sites.

A description of a typical Starfish site is as follows. ‘A series of skeletal structures were erected all over a valley farm, covering an area of about one mile by a quarter with scaffolding towers and blocks of wire baskets. Pairs of one thousand gallon galvanised tanks were positioned on top of 20 foot high towers, one filled with water and the other with diesel or paraffin. Under each tank a simple control system like a WC flush released the liquids down pipes into 15 foot heavy cast iron troughs filled with coal or coke over a bed of fire lighter materials. Electrically wired flash bang detonators assured ignition by a switch in the dug out. The idea was that the coal would be lit when enemy bombers were in the area at night and after the cast iron trough was good and hot the diesel was released. This boiled and the vapours ignited. The water was then released onto the burning oil causing a virtual explosion of fire and steam.’

‘Patterns of fire baskets were arranged to look like blocks of buildings. Each basket, about the size of a tea chest was made of wire mesh and stuffed with oil soaked wood shavings or similar inflammable materials, each wired up for controlled ignition. To keep the rain out, each fire was covered with tarred roofing felt.’

‘Trenches were dug at the corners of the site, well away from the fires. Only about three feet deep but eight feet wide and 15 feet long with a ramp at each end for rolling 45 gallon drums of fuel into safe storage and ready for reloading after operations.’

Starfish Sites were set up on open land between one and eight miles from the intended targets. In daylight, the equipment could well resemble chicken sheds, etc., but when ignited at night the boilers and fire baskets looked just like bombs exploding, incendiaries burning and buildings on fire – these effects could be made to last a number of hours. There were an estimated ten thousand people engaged on decoy work scattered all over the country. Starfish sites only operated at night and were designed to look like industrial complexes. But there were many other kinds of decoys.

Col Turner's Department also set up airfield decoys to attract daytime strafing as well as night bombers. 'K' Sites were dummy airfields with dummy aircraft well dispersed, an old ambulance and fire tender, cardboard buildings and simulated defences including gun emplacements which were regularly manned. The dummy aircraft were moved about from day to day.

Q Sites were dummy night time airfields. The early goose neck flared Flare Paths were later replaced with electric lighting. QL sites were to simulate dummy towns at night using various lights, and were designed so that at night they could look like factories, marshalling yards, shipyards, steelworks, etc. QL lights ingeniously included welding flashes, railway signals (red and green), red railway crossing gate lights, tram car electrical flashes, standard lamps, even the open fire box of a steam locomotive glowing in the dark. They could also be made to look like open skylights, doors and windows where someone carelessly had not complied with the Blackout regulations. In the UK including Northern Ireland there were around 230 dummy airfields and 400 dummy urban and industrial sites.

During the large troop and equipment build up in the South of England, prior to the Normandy invasion, there was a whole host of fake bases, airfields, ammunition dumps, vehicle parks and shipping, set up miles away around the coastal areas of the south east. This gave the enemy the idea that any invasion threat would come from a different direction than the allies real intended plan.

Starfish was first tried out in December 1940, it drew off five Nazi blitz attempts that month. By the end of the war Starfish decoyed 100 major strafing and 5% of German bombs were dropped harmlessly, saving an estimated 2,500 lives and 3,000 casualties.

During the daylight attacks in 1940 and early 1941, dummy planes and dumps decoyed 36 attacks meant to hit the RAF. At night, some farms became airfields with phoney landing lights simulating the real thing. But it was the Starfish that saved the lives of civilians and prevented the destruction of millions of pounds worth of property.

In April 1941, 144 Nazi planes headed for Portsmouth. Eight bombs fell on the town. Then the planes passed on, lured by Starfish, to drop hundreds more bombs in open country.

In one night 150 bombs intended for Cardiff went astray. Many hundreds of bombs meant for Bristol missed. A Middlesborough blitz was also foiled. But Starfish did not always work well with widespread cities like London, Birmingham. At Glasgow, success was hampered by tram flashes, though one night 100 bombs were dropped away on the hills. A full moon that lit up Liverpool docks beat Starfish during Merseyside's worth week of bombing. But an attack on Nottingham was diverted, as a Starfish blazed into the night as German planes wheeled, dropping their bombs in the Belvoir Valley 14 miles away. The pilots had thought the Starfish was Derby, also scheduled for blitzing, and took it as their guide in dropping their bombs where they thought Nottingham lay. The only casualties were some cows.

Starfish was one of the best kept secrets of the war. Farmers who had RAF decoy experts billeted with them did not talk. Nor did they complain -though the location of a Starfish on their land meant great risk to them and their families. In fact, in 730 attacks on decoys only four civilian casualties occurred.

Without the K site dummy airfields the Battle of Britain might have been lost, because they attracted half the attacks meant for the real operational airfields. Between 1940 and 1944 the night time Q site airfields were bombed as much as the real, operational airfields.

[Guest pfn]

http://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/uploads/monthly_06_2007/post-42-1181821733.jpghttp://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/uploads/monthly_06_2007/post-42-1181821755.jpg

http://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/uploads/monthly_06_2007/post-42-1181821784.jpghttp://www.sheffieldhistory.co.uk/forums/uploads/monthly_06_2007/post-42-1181821809.jpg

Following on from the info above, here are some wartime photos of a Starfish site in action, an aerial view of a dummy airfield, a dummy Spitfire, and some dummy military ships.

[Bayleaf]

Here's a list of the sites around this area. (SF3 was the code for Sheffield)

(Sorry I had to do it this way, I'm a newbie and haven't got to grips with formatting yet!)

To find the Ringinglow site, walk along Houndkirk Road (the abandoned turnpike) from Fox House. Not far along there are some concrete bases off to the right. This was the control blockhouse. (These were later the site for an experimental radar system.) A bit further, after dropping over the hill, there is a signpost for a path off to the left up into the rocks. The site is opposite this on the other side of the path. It's a flattish area with 'humps and bumps' .

There's a wartime aerial photo in the book mentioned.

This is the site today.

[Guest Oswald]

pfn... can you tell me where the picture of the starfish site in action comes from please?