We’re out in the Thames estuary off the coast of Essex and Kent, in the United Kingdom.
We’re visiting a set of anti-aircraft forts called Red Sands,
which were put in place in 1942 and designed by Guy Maunsell.
They were very, very strategic in the saving of London
from the Luftwaffe bombers during World War II.
In Great Britain, the key targets for the German Air Force were airfields,
plants, docks, major railway junctions, and ports.
Many cities were suffering from massive air raids, and London was no exception.
A vulnerable part of the British capital’s air defense was the wide Thames estuary:
it was like an avenue for Luftwaffe warplanes to approach their targets.
So the Admiralty decided to cover this breach with a system of forts.
They had all sorts of ideas that they thought of.
But they couldn’t really come to any conclusion.
They looked around for people who may be able to build something or design something
and they come across Guy Maunsell who was a leading architectural engineer at the time.
And he came up with some ideas that he put to the Admiralty
and some of them were thrown out, and some were thought about for a while.
But they had to act really quickly.
It was 1942. The war was becoming more and more intense,
and the UK couldn’t leave London unprotected from German aviation.
The government approved one of Guy Maunsell’s projects,
which had already been used when building a system of forts near Liverpool.
Though this project wasn’t a standard one,
it was quite simple and could be built quickly.
Red Sands was part of a system of three forts located on sandbars in the Thames estuary
about 60 km away from London.
In August 1942, they started building towers for the future Red Sands artillery battery.
Each fort comprised a number of three-story platforms,
supported by hollow reinforced concrete tubes a little over 20 meters long.
This structure was loaded on a special pontoon
and towed to the installation site by sea tugs.
Then the tower was put onto the seabed.
The towers were to be installed in a special order.
The platform with two 40-mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns
was put onto the sea first,
so that it could defend other towers during their installation.
Then they installed the central, command tower.
It was surrounded by four artillery towers with 94-mm Mark VI anti-aircraft guns.
The seventh platform was put further out and equipped with a powerful searchlight.
The towers were interconnected by steel walkways.
All the platforms were designed in such a way
so that together they formed an integral system.
The fort’s anti-aircraft guns could fire at 360 degrees.
A submerged telephone cable and a radio link provided its coastal communications.
The idea of the constructions as you see them now,
where they are placed, is in the same format and formation as it would be on land,
in an ordinary artillery base that you’d have on land.
So it’s protected by the Bofors tower and the searchlight tower.
They’re arranged in such a way that they protect each other.
In November 1943, the Red Sands Fort was completed and put on full alert.
Here we are on gun tower No. 1.
Here is the shell locker to my left. 32 shells held in this locker,
there are three others around the site as well.
For this gun, the 3.7-inch gun. Also on the other towers as well.
Another three towers having the same gun, same shell lockers.
Also the Bofors tower, which had two of its own Bofors guns.
This indeed was a very good installation and very effective in World War II.
Command and control over the fort
was exercised from the central, command tower.
This is where the fort kept its most precious tool—the radar.
Putting these forts out at sea with the radar,
extended the ability to see what activities the Germans were doing.
They were putting mines in the outskirts of the estuary.
And when the merchant ships left London on their way out,
they would have been detonated and they would have damage the ships.
But with the radar you could see where they were
and you could then control your merchant ships around the mines,
so that they didn’t get attacked.
So it’s a good extension of having the radar out here
rather than back in London or on the Kent and Essex coast,
because it would be too short of a distance for it to work.
And it worked very well.
You can only guess how the soldiers felt when they arrived at Red Sands.
They were to spend a month in iron boxes elevated over water in the middle of the sea.
And the crews had to keep their spirits up,
as they were on the frontline of the British capital’s air defense.
And I have spoken to somebody who worked here at that time,
and he was saying that it was quite a hard job at times,
very mentally demanding,
because he had to keep busy to stop yourself going a bit crazy.
During the war, when they were outside, certainly in the winter months,
from my understanding, they used to keep leaving the top
and going inside for a little bit and come back out again,
because it was just too cold.
There’s no heating upstairs that would keep the roof warm.
So they just had to brave it out, a bit like, I suppose,
any other soldier in the field, really.
But they still had to do lots of duties that were set for them on the fort.
There would be things like drill service, where they would clean the searchlight tower,
maintain the guns, they would maintain the building itself
and generally they would look out for enemy aircraft,
they would load up the shells onto the roof area and put them into the lockers there,
and they would pretty much keep on testing their ability
to respond fairly quickly in the event of an air raid.
During the war, the air defense forts shot down 22 aircraft,
35 V-1 flying bombs,
and even seriously damaged a German submarine
that entered the Thames estuary to deploy mines.
In general, the Maunsell Forts proved to be very effective.
The enemy no longer dared to fly to London from the sea.
Previously, conducting a raid on the British capital “from around the corner”
was a walk in the park for the Luftwaffe.
And now Maunsell’s towers made this route extremely dangerous.
When hostilities ceased, with the war, finishing in 1945,
a caretaker crew were left on board all the forts
to maintain them and look after in case anything started up again,
and a lot of time they were just playing cards and things like that to busy themselves
as they didn’t have much to do, but trying to keep it in good condition.
And then finally in 1956, they decided they didn’t require them anymore,
the government decided they didn’t need them anymore,
so they decided to get people off and that’s it,
they abandoned them completely by 1958.
During the next six years, the forts were looted completely.
Everything that could be cut off or taken away is gone forever.
Meanwhile, the 60s were in full swing: people wanted to have fun,
new music was becoming popular among the youth,
and the only official radio station at the time, BBC,
broadcasted it for only an hour a week.
This formed fertile soil for the emergence of pirate radio stations in the United Kingdom.
Some entrepreneurs then thought well perhaps rather than have a ship
we’ll use these forts
because they were in international waters at the time.
And come 1967 the government were really desperate to get rid of them.
“Well, we can get rid of the boats, we’ll just change the law,
where you can’t supply the boats, you can’t supply more food,
and you can’t supply them with advertising.”
But they were having trouble with the forts
because they were in international waters and they were in the Thames estuary.
And they did some crafty things really.
They decided that they would subtly get lots of sand
from outside of the Thames estuary and drop it very close to Middle Sand,
which is a sandbank, and just drop lots and lots of sand on it,
very discretely so no one saw.
And then suddenly they got the Admiralty to come out with a UK flag…
…And stick it on the sandbank and say, “It’s now above water,
this is the water datum line for the UK,
and you are two miles away and not three miles away.”
And so they just changed the law of the sea,
and they finally decided that they can now prosecute them
under the Wireless Telegraphy Act of the UK.
That they would have to cease broadcasting.
There was lots of appeals, they kept appealing and appealing,
and finally that was it, they had to close down.
When the radio stations were shut down, Guy Maunsell’s forts were abandoned for good;
and since then, they’ve been in a state of disrepair,
falling apart right in front of your eyes.
A week before our film crew arrived at the fort,
a part was torn away from one of the platforms
and fell into the water,
bringing the Maunsell towers one step closer to complete destruction.
Time is now the key enemy for these really wonderful structures,
and it looks like they are destined to lose this battle.