The "Y" service was a network of British signals intelligence collection sites, the Y-stations. The service was established during the First World War and used again during the Second World War.
Role
The "Y" name derived from Wireless Interception (WI).
The stations tended to be one of two types, for intercepting the signals and for identifying where they were coming from. Sometimes both functions were operated at the same site, with the direction finding (D/F) hut being a few hundred metres from the main interception building to minimise interference. The sites collected radio traffic which was then either analysed locally or, if
encryption, passed for processing initially to the Admiralty Room 40 in London and then during World War II to the Government Code and Cypher School at
Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire.
In the Second World War a large house called "Arkley View" on the outskirts of Chipping Barnet (now part of the London Borough of Barnet) acted as a data collection centre, where traffic was collated and passed to Bletchley Park; it also housed a Y station.[Nicholls, J., (2000) England Needs You: The Story of Beaumanor Y Station World War II Cheam, published by Joan Nicholls] Many amateur radio operators supported the work of the Y stations, being enrolled as "Voluntary Interceptors".
The term was also used for similar stations attached to the India outpost of the Intelligence Corps, the Wireless Experimental Centre (WEC) outside Delhi.[Aldrich, Richard James (2000), Intelligence and the War Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service, Cambridge University Press]
Direction-finding Y stations
Specially constructed Y stations undertook high-frequency direction finding (D/F) of wireless transmissions. This became particularly important in the Battle of the Atlantic where locating
U-boats was vital. Admiral Dönitz told his commanders that they could not be located if they limited their wireless transmissions to under 30 seconds, but skilled D/F operators were able to locate the origin of their signals in as few as six seconds.
The design of land-based D/F stations preferred by the Allies during the Second World War was the Adcock antenna, where a small operators' hut was surrounded by four vertical aerial poles, usually placed at the points of the compass. Aerial feeders ran underground, surfaced in the centre of the hut and were connected to a direction finding goniometer and a wireless receiver, that allowed the bearing of the signal source to be measured. In the UK some operators were located in an underground metal tank. These stations were usually in remote places, often in the middle of farmers' fields. Traces of Second World War D/F stations can be seen as circles in the fields surrounding the village of Goonhavern in Cornwall.[ The operators huts can still be seen in the centre of the circles.]
Y station sites in Britain
-
Beachy Head, Sussex
-
Beaumanor Hall, near Loughborough, Leicestershire (operated by the Army)
-
Beeston Hill, Beeston Regis, Norfolk
-
Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire (operated by the Army)
-
Brora, Sutherland
-
RAF Canterbury, Kent
-
Woodhead Hall, Cheadle, Staffordshire
-
RAF Chicksands, Bedfordshire (operated by the RAF)
-
RAF Clophill, Bedfordshire
-
Cromer, Norfolk
-
Forest Moor, near Harrogate (operated by the Army)
-
G.P.O. Transatlantic Radiophone Station Kemback, near Cupar, Fife
-
Denmark Hill, Camberwell (operated by the Metropolitan Police and General Post Office (GPO) for the Foreign Office)
-
Met Office Dunstable, Bedfordshire
-
Felixstowe, Suffolk
-
Gilnahirk, Belfast
-
Gorleston, Norfolk
-
Hall Place, Kent
-
Harpenden, Hertfordshire (Army, No. 1 Special Wireless Group)
-
Hawklaw, Fife
-
RAF Flowerdown, Winchester, Hampshire
-
HMS Forest Moor, Harrogate, Yorkshire
-
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire
-
RAF Kingsdown, Hollywood Manor, West Kingsdown, Kent
-
RAF Monks Risborough, Monks Risborough, Buckinghamshire
-
Knockholt, Kent (run by the Foreign Office for non-Morse radiotelegraphy signals)
-
Markyate, Hertfordshire (operated by the Army)
-
Newbold Revel, RAF 'Y' Service Secret Intelligence and German Telephony Communications Base, Warwickshire.
-
North Walsham, Norfolk
-
Sandridge, Hertfordshire (operated by the Foreign Office)
-
Saxmundham, Suffolk
-
GCHQ Scarborough (operated by the Royal Navy)
-
Shenley Brook End Milton Keynes (operated by the Army)
-
South Walsham, Norfolk
-
Southwold, Suffolk
-
Stockland Bristol, near Bridgwater, Somerset
-
Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland
-
HMS Ventnor, Rew Down, Isle of Wight
-
RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire
-
Whitchurch, Shropshire in The Old Rectory, Claypit Street (operated by the Foreign Office)
-
Wick (operated by the RAF)
-
Higher Wincombe, Donhead St Mary, Wiltshire (operated by the GPO for the Foreign Office)
[ Held at Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre]
-
Withernsea, East Yorkshire from a pub, the St. Leonards, now known as Captain Williams
-
Woodcock Hill, Sandridge, St Albans
Bibliography
External links
