Ah yes I remember it well!

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Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by Gibbo2286 »

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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by bobins »

Whilst I'm not old enough to remember WW2 air raid sirens, I do remember Cold War ones - not that they differed !
I was on top of an office block in (I think) Liverpool when the air raid siren there was briefly run up. Bleedin' LOUD ! and it makes you sit up a bit :-D
I remember reading an article about one going off unexpectedly early one morning due to crossed wires (not sure if literal or metaphorical) during the 1980s - instead of everyone running to take cover, they merely turned over and went back to sleep :lol: Fat lot of good they were :rofl2:
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by mickthemaverick »

When I was a very young child in Watford one of the factories installed an ex air raid siren as a factory time siren. :shock: The locals soon complained bitterly about the raw memories it caused and they had to replace it with a more traditional factory siren which sounded at 2pm and 10pm to signal the end of the two shifts which they operated. Thankfully they had no night shift so we were not forced to suffer a 6am rendering!! :-D
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by Paul-R »

The air raid siren was used by the fire station a mile or so away to warn of a fire somewhere and that a fire engine was being sent out when I was young. Difficult to give a year when it stopped being used but it was definitely being used in the sixties.
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by Michel »

bobins wrote: 17 May 2021, 18:14 Whilst I'm not old enough to remember WW2 air raid sirens, I do remember Cold War ones - not that they differed !
I was on top of an office block in (I think) Liverpool when the air raid siren there was briefly run up. Bleedin' LOUD ! and it makes you sit up a bit :-D
I remember reading an article about one going off unexpectedly early one morning due to crossed wires (not sure if literal or metaphorical) during the 1980s - instead of everyone running to take cover, they merely turned over and went back to sleep :lol: Fat lot of good they were :rofl2:
The one that was in the factory near our house in Rossendale went off in 1981 or 2, at night. Put the wind up my mum for sure.
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by bobins »

Paul-R wrote: 17 May 2021, 22:46 The air raid siren was used by the fire station a mile or so away.........

Apparently there used to be one on a pole here to summon Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew and the others to the station for a 'shout'. I think it was still in use in the 80s - I'll ask my mate who used to be in the brigade.
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by white exec »

For decades, the UK Early Warning System's sirens were simply switched on and off by the telephone landline network.
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by mickthemaverick »

white exec wrote: 18 May 2021, 09:18 For decades, the UK Early Warning System's sirens were simply switched on and off by the telephone landline network.
Just to elaborate slightly as the 30 years are up, :-D, they were actually connected via a seperate network of PW's, sorry Private Wires, connecting all the "cold war communications buildings" together. Those circuits were carried on the same cables as the telephone network but not actually part of it. There was a name for the system which was WB400 if I remember correctly. I had one such centre under my management for a period and the routine test program included checking the functionality of sirens!! :) Gotta go now, an ominous black van has just pulled up with 2 very hefty chaps in white coats........
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by white exec »

It's amazing how rapidly those guys in black vans turn up!
Had just that experience (around 1974) when I got out of our Mini, while on holiday. Was on the small road, just above the Faslane sub base on ?? Loch Long.
Think I might have had a Pentax Spotmatic in hand at the time . . . :-s
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by mickthemaverick »

I just looked it up to confirm my own memory and found this informative link if you are interested in the cold war:

"At each of the remote sites ( Warning Points, Warning Recipients or ROC Post/Control) the line terminated onto a filter and then onto the ‘Receiver Carrier WB400’ This grey metal cased unit was the part of the system visible to the public."

https://www.subbrit.org.uk/features/col ... ng-system/
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by mickthemaverick »

white exec wrote: 18 May 2021, 09:46
Think I might have had a Pentax Spotmatic in hand at the time . . . :-s
Lucky to be alive then Chris, unless of course you carry the scars of a polaris up where the sun don't shine :-D
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by Gibbo2286 »

The cold war early warning system had local warning posts in each area, I had one on the top shelf in my village shop and a siren in the back of the workshop, we had regular practice runs and also had to go to Cheltenham police headquarters for training. In the event of hostilities commencing we were to have explosive flares as well.
this is what we had in the shop, the WB400



A tearoom we used to visit in the north of Scotland at Dunnet Head had one of those cold war early warning systems, used to bleep all the time - you hoped. It was Pye equipment similar to the Cambridge PMR range. Sorry, didn't mean to modify your post, clicked on the wrong thing. :oops:

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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by white exec »

My experience of the Cold War (as a then teenager) was limited to
(a) worry
(b) an active part in local (Ealing) CND
(c) later exploration of a few abandoned ROC posts.

Fail Safe, Dr.Strangelove, Twilight's Last Gleaming and The War Game are still on the shelf here.

Around 1986, we screened a 16mm print of Peter Watkins' BBC film The War Game to our Sixth Form. Despite being twenty-years-on, they were shattered and sickened. In '65, when it was made, it was decided it was "unsuitable for public screening". Within a week, the BFI organised several screenings at the NFT in Waterloo - for MPs and BFI members. It was there that I first saw it. Rather like Schindler's List, many of the audience just sat there in stunned silence at the end of the film.
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by bobins »

mickthemaverick wrote: 18 May 2021, 09:35 There was a name for the system which was WB400 if I remember correctly. I had one such centre under my management for a period and the routine test program included checking the functionality of sirens!! :) Gotta go now, an ominous black van has just pulled up with 2 very hefty chaps in white coats........
[-( :-** :-# :peaceman: :sulk:

I didn't think they sent out the men in vans anymore. All the monitoring and control is done over the internet. About the only telltale that you're being monitored is a very slow internet connection that can't be sped up :rofl2: :rofl2: :lol: 8-[
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Re: Ah yes I remember it well!

Post by Peter.N. »

Sadly I do remember the WW2 sirens and diving into the Anderson shelter, also in my first year or so at school. There was a siren on top of the police box in Petts Wood. I also remember all our back windows being blown in when I bomb landed somewhere nearby.

My grandparents smallholding had a double sized Anderson shelter which after the war they used to store apples - I will never forget that smell. There were several houses bombed in their road and I remember watching them being rebuilt, one of the workers gave me a piece of sausage sandwich - a new experience for me.

My grandmother supplied a lot of the houses with eggs, she had two big sheds of hens. I remember the money box on the window sill and pile of coupons. They also grew some beautiful fruit there, I remember the juicy Victoria plums, greengages and lots of other fruit, I used to gorge myself down there in the summer. There was a big cherry tree which grew over the tool shed, you could stand on the roof and stuff your self with them. All the fruit was delicious, not like the rubbish you get at the supermarket today, but this was in Kent, that's the place for fruit, doesn't grow so well here.

Their smallholding was in Bromley, a long strip of land between the houses and the Victoria railway line near Bromley south station, they used to get most of their living from that, could have been out in the country to me.

When I started work in 1954 it was in London, Cheapside, and about half of the houses in the road had been bombed out so there was a huge area that you could park on - if you were rich enough to be able to afford a car. We had a ford Thames 10cwt van at the shop, the one with the engine off centre with one long and one short half shaft, not strictly half shafts of course. My word that was a long time ago, who would have thought then that they would be doing away with IC engines now.

Peter
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