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SOUND AN ALARM

The Role of a UKWMO Warning Team Officer

In each of the 5 Sector Areas covering the UK there were permanent Staff Officers including the Sector Controller and two training officers who undertook the training of the Warning Teams in each of 5 Group Controls.

At a Group Control there was a Group Controller who, by definition was the Officer responsible - to Sector - for the executive operation of all personnel in the Group area. This responsibility, via the Group Commandant, would have included all the members of the Royal Observer Corps both stationed at the Control and at Monitoring Posts, as well as the Warning Officers, possibly some 350 volunteers.

The function of the Warning Officer was to analyse information gathered from the 30 to 40 ROC Monitoring Posts, the Control ROC personnel and from the Met' Office at Bracknell as well as the BBC weather forecasts.

The work would take place mostly in the main Control room and in front of a large illuminated screen showing a map of the Group and its surrounding areas. On the back of the screen, specially trained Observers would write information, in 'reverse script' that would assist the Warning Officers in their calculations and predictions.

The purpose of this work was to enable the Team to "Sound an Alarm" at appropriate times: alarms that would be recognised by people hearing them and which would hopefully have given them time to protect themselves by getting under cover.

There were three types of Warning 'Alarms' to be sounded.

The first would inform the UK as a whole that the Country was under Air Attack by hostile forces, 'Attack Warning Red'. This was to originate from the 'Air Defence Staff' and UKRAOC - the UK Regional Air Operations Centre and then be rapidly passed to Government HQ, the 5 Sector HQ's, and thence to the Group Controllers at the 25 Group HQ's. UKRAOC would 'key activate' a special electronics box that would alert 250 Carrier Control Points located in major Police Stations throughout the UK. At these points, switches would be pressed that would activate some 7000 power operated sirens in mainly urban areas, backed up by a network of about 11000 other warning devices in rural areas, including the 870 ROC manned Monitoring Posts. Thus the entire Country should have been rapidly Warned - an Alarm would have been sounded - of an Air Attack.

The theory was that during the preceding days or weeks, the people should have heard via the Media that a Strike situation may be developing. We would have been made aware that a Nuclear Strike could be a possibility.

The second type of Alarm was the 'Black' Warning, a much more local situation. Radioactive fallout could be expected. Monitoring Post Observers were trained to recognise either an Air burst or a Ground Burst. Equipment was used to 'see' the burst from their location. Other Posts would also 'see' the burst and report the quadrant in which it was 'seen'. By triangulation, the Observers at Group Control could establish its exact location and have it plotted on the Screen map in the Control Room. The Observers would thus report the size of the bursting weapon and the 'Spot Size', reading from the Ground Zero Indicator (GZI) and the Bomb Power Indicator which recorded the 'Blast Peak Overpressure', all such readings taken from within a White box sitting above the reinforced concrete Post roof. An Air burst was one that was seen not to touch the ground. It was deemed to be clean, despite the fact that its blast affect and consequent area of devastation was much greater.

A Ground burst on the other hand had 'touched' the ground and in doing so had taken up ground material into the 'Mushroom Cloud', which would fall back to earth in a radioactive cloud. Monitoring Posts downwind of such a burst would subsequently report levels of radiation back to Group Control.

The Warning Team's task would now be to issue Black Warnings at the appropriate times, probably one of the most difficult calculations to be made. They had to be aware of the predicted and actual wind speed and direction, the size of the nuclear weapon and the fact that it had struck the ground. They set about calculating the probability that 'fallout' would travel downwind at a certain speed and that the 'plume' would also spread out in a predictable 'cone' shape. In sending out the 'Fallout Warning' the aim would have been to give a maximum of 30 minutes but not less than 20 minutes warning of the arrival of fallout in certain areas. They therefore instructed the relevant Carrier Control Points where the Police would be able to issue fallout warnings via their 'Carrier line broadcast systems'. ROC Monitoring Posts were also equipped to fire off Maroons as soon as they detected fallout on their equipment. [whether or not the Police had relayed the warning]

The point of this complicated technical task was so that the 'fortunate' UK citizens who had not been caught in the blast of such a weapon, had to be warned that another threat about to descend on them downwind of a strike could only be avoided by taking refuge within adequate cover until such time that they heard the third 'All Clear' Warning.

Warning Officers, just as their ROC colleagues, had to be prepared to be called from their homes or occupations to service under total Home Office control. They would have had to abandon their families at the outset and thus had to preplan in order to provide whatever protection and cover they thought might be adequate.

Whether or not the Alarm System would prove to be adequate or even in good enough working order was questionable and indeed at the times prior to 1992, discussed and questioned.

The writer can relate the following anecdote by way of an International comparison to UKWMO. During 1988, (or thereabouts) and when CWO of my Group team, I was going on vacation to New York. My Sector Controller organised a meeting with an officer of the US government, involved in a similar nuclear defence capacity. I arrived in downtown Manhattan and rose to the 13th floor of a skyscraper where I was invited into an open-plan glass sided 'Control' office for that New York State area. I was treated courteously and with some degree of amazement when I informed the gentleman that in UKWMO we would initiate Alarms and advice to Warn the general Public in the event of a nuclear attack on the UK. Asking what system they had, the reply appeared to rest on the shoulders of Sheriff Departments in New York State - to use Citizens Band Radio to contact his community officers and thus the public at large.

Perhaps we were well served between 1958 and 1992 by UKWMO, by which time the threat was deemed to be so low as not to be worth the cost of retaining a mainly volunteer organisation. Now it appears to be a Fire Service responsibility. The country has lost the service of ten thousand volunteers.

P.C.