Fort Number 2 was delayed as the Admiralty pondered over the type of radar (RDF) Radio Direction Finding equipment. At one stage they altered the specification from that fitted on Fort #1 Roughs, then changed their minds wasting some 5 weeks

Fort Number 2 named & commissioned HM Fort Sunk Head on 1st May 1942

The two 9 Ton 3.7" Heavy Anti-Aircraft Guns were trialled the next day at Gravesend

On the 22nd May at 13.45 Sunk Head Fort was towed from Red Lion Wharf across the river to the Coaling Jetty at Tilbury & Degaussed

Awaiting a break in the weather towing out commenced on 1st June 1942 with grounding accomplished on 2nd June at 22.30 off Walton-on-the-Naze

In the early hours of the 3rd June 1942 Sunk Head was ready for action

Pictured above right ERM Jock Bell, STO Murdoch, & STO Darky Campbell in December 1946

Above left Same view different time period: Manning the 40mm Bofors Gun & the Lantern & Radar Tophouse on 1st June 1942

In June 1944 a violent storm carried away the entire Dolphin on Sunk Head along with its half ton Derrick & engine. Thereafter transfer of supplies in choppy seas was made using breeches buoy

N.B Roughs lost their Dolphin in the same storm which also tore away part of the D-Day Mulberry Harbour in Normandy

Above right Sunk Head in 1946 with PO/MM George Turner of the care & maintenance crew, Sunk Head claimed a kill tally of 6 aircraft & 6 flying bombs "doodlebugs"

Decommissioned in 1945 care & maintenance crews took over until final abandonment by the MoD in 1958

Radio Tower Transmission Equipment

The transmitter, generation plant, associated studio & related electronic equipment aboard the Sunk Head Fort

A forum to add your comments recollections & experiences of Tower Radio, Tower Television & Radio Tower

A Canadian Army Wireless set #52

The set was intended for voice communications & could be used as a ground station or in a vehicle

Weighing 255 Lbs the small unit was 44" long, 17.5" high & 14" deep

Operation was between 1.75 - 16MHz but with a crystal calibrator any frequency could be set within 5KHz

In the description it states "There is also a nice canvas curtain which covers the front to protect the set from weather & dirt"

Intended as an a Army field speech communications unit it was hardly an ideal choice for an Offshore Station

Pictured above the transmitter section of the a Canadian Army Wireless set #52

The Canadian Wireless set 52 was designed & built in Canada by Canadian Marconi

Presumably Tower were only using the transmitter section, right hand side of unit & possibly the aerial tuner, the box on top

The centre box is the rotary generator that supplied the HT volts & the receiver is the left hand box. They may have used the generator set bit to allow running from batteries as Radio Sutch did with the first Radio Sutch transmitter, I believe a 19 set? For a picture of this unit see Sutch & City Pics 4 I vaguely recall all that kit in a store room on the Radio City fort in 1965

The 52 TX is a set I am very familiar with; as configured for the military they produced about 75 watts carrier on phone Amplitude Modulated (AM) if you were lucky

I bought three of them from a surplus dealer in Tottenham North London, who had piles of them, for use as the transmitters for Radio Free Caroline in London at the end of 1968

We never succeeded in getting them to work well as they were too complicated, so they were stripped & the bits used to build a couple of simpler transmitters

Circuit attached (RFC copy gif). Unfortunatly because of all the mucking around Radio Jackie beat us to air by two or three weeks - Mike Craig (Watts)

Dave Porter

What a sad story, the project had all the ingredients to turn out as it did:

* No finance
* No engineering knowledge
* No antenna height for either MF [bad enough] or TV [even worse]
* No decent txs
* Too far from the coast, on TV you would lose all the field strength before you got to the beach
* Antenna system for Band 1 TV looks substantial, they might have got that right but no mast height

With grateful thanks to Mike Craig & Dave Porter for the input to the output

Web Site Message from: Mark Hampson

Dear Sirs, I am currently building a site for the Martello Caravan Park in Walton-on-the-Naze.
I am trying to put together a brief history of the park and its historic Martello Tower of which still stands today. Through search engines I found your website & have read the history of Tower Radio with a great deal of interest. Archives of this park have proved hard to locate, its previous history is somewhat sketchy Regards Mark Hampson Esquire Marketing Ltd.

21/10/09 - I discovered the Tower Radio story by accident. George Short was my uncle and was a wonderful man. Everything he did was fun in my young eyes, I was only 16 at the time. I believe George died of Prostate cancer in 1968 but I think his widow Pamela still lives in Colchester. I belive that my three cousins Julie Linda and Dianne also still live in the area. I live in California these days but still remember the days when every kid had a tranny tuned to one of the pirate radio stations. Thank you so much for the story. - All Best David Williams

For a technical description & appraisal of the Canadian Army Wireless set #52 see VMARS Newsletter from August 1999

For the complete Sunk Head Fort Tower Radio/Radio Tower story navigate from Radio Tower Part 1

For a brief history on all the Thames Estuary Forts navigate from Fort Fax