United Kingdom
Warning and Monitoring Organisation
The United Kingdom Warning and
Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) operated between 1957 and 1992 to
provide UK military and civilian authorities with data on nuclear
explosions and forecasts of fallout across the country in the
event of nuclear war. In the event of war it had five main functions.
These were:
Warning the public of any air
attack.
Providing confirmation of nuclear
strike.
Warning the public of the
approach of radioactive fall-out.
Supplying the civilian and
military authorities in the United Kingdom and neighbouring
countries in NATO with details of nuclear bursts and with a
scientific assessment of the path and intensity of fall-out.
Provision of a post-attack
meteorological service.
The UKWMO was established in 1957, and
funded by the Home Office but mainly utilised Royal
Observer Corps (ROC) premises and its uniformed volunteer
personnel as the field force. The only time the combined organisations
were on high alert in the Cold War was during the Cuban Missile Crisis
in October and November 1962. The organisation was wound up and
disbanded in November 1992 following a review prompted by the
government's Options
for Change report (about halfway down).
Information
of an impending air attack on the country would have come from a number
of sources, including North America, NATO, and RAF Sector Operations
Centres. In the main, however, warning of such attacks would come from
the UK/USA Ballistic Missile Early Warning System BMEWS in England, (the
site is now upgraded and still operational at RAF
Fylingdales, on the North York Moors) and disseminated through
UKRAOC (UK Regional Air Operations Centre) - based at RAF
High Wycombe to the carrier warning system, backed up by further
information from other points of the system in Alaska and Greenland.
BMEWS was replaced by the Solid State Early Warning System in 2001. This
was commonly, and slightly erroneously, known as the four minute
warning. Warning of bomber attack would have come via UK and other NATO
radar stations. The original radome (golf balls) are shown in this
old picture.
The Headquarters of the UKWMO was located in a converted barracks
building in James Wolfe Road, Cowley, Oxfordshire, (now demolished) and
was headed by a Director and Deputy Director supported by a small
administrative staff. Co-located with HQ-UKWMO was the Headquarters of
No 3 Oxford Group Royal Observer Corps. Five professional Sector
Controllers and five Assistant Sector Controllers were co-located at the
five Royal Observer Corps area headquarters.
At each of the twenty five ROC group controls the UKWMO was represented
by volunteers and specially trained members. In the event of war the
senior UKWMO volunteer present would command the group as Group
Controller. Assessing the nuclear burst and fallout information and data
provided by the ROC was a team of ten or more Warning Officers led by a
Chief Warning Officer.
The members of the warning team were recruited from mainly local
secondary school science teachers, or commercial engineers and
technicians with a scientific education and background.
The Director UKWMO would be located at the United Kingdom Regional Air
Operations Command (UK RAOC) within Strike Command's Operations Centre
nuclear bunker at RAF High Wycombe to instigate what is commonly known
as the four minute warning. The Deputy Director would be located at a
standby UK RAOC at Goosnargh, Lancashire, within
the UKWMO Western Sector nuclear bunker, shown here. Warnings would have
been instantly distributed around the country by the Warning Broadcast
System via 250 Carrier Control Points located at major police
headquarters and 17,000 WB400 (later WB1400) carrier receivers in armed
forces headquarters, hospitals, post offices, ROC posts and private
homes in remote rural areas where hand operated sirens replaced the
power sirens in the urban towns.
Spare time
warning team members were activated, through a telephone calling card
procedure, by whole-time Royal Observer Corps officers located at the
twenty five group headquarters. All ROC telephone lines and the warning
broadcast system were protected by the Government Telephone Preference
Scheme that kept the lines active when the general public's system would
be suspended under wartime regulations. The lines were generally routed
separately from exchange to exchange and maintained by special teams of
GPO workers using vans that did not have the markings of the Area
Manager.
A major update of equipment was undertaken in the 1980s to bring the
UKWMO up to date. Modern detection instruments, including the PDRM82
and PDRM82F, were provided to the ROC together with an
improved Atomic Weapons Detection Recognition and Estimation of
Yield (AWDREY) equipment. WB1400 Carrier Control Point Updated warning
equipment was installed in most government buildings, nuclear bunkers,
armed forces HQs, police and fire stations and also in private houses
and pubs in remote areas, replacing the WB400. Two hundred major police
stations were used as the area control points for power operated sirens,
so these were equipped with new WB1400 carrier control warning
equipment. If a warning was received then the police could operate the
sirens via remote control, the carrier warning signal did not
automatically operate the warning sirens (many of which were those used
in the Second World War). Some sirens could be controlled
automatically. Between 1985 and 1990 all communications links used
by the warning system, the UKWMO and the ROC were upgraded and EMP
hardened. Point to point SX2000 automated telephone exchanges were
installed in ROC headquarters and old fashioned teleprinter equipment
was replaced with modern computerised message switching equipment. For
details of the communications systems visit:
http://www.ringbell.co.uk/ukwmo/index.htm
UKWMO personnel undertook specialist residential training at the
Emergency Planning College at Easingwold in Yorkshire, Easingwold
had been a Home Office Civil Defence Training School. Several major war
simulation exercises were held each year two WARMON (Warning and
Monitoring) one day UK exercises and the two day INTEX (INternational
EXercise) along with other NATO countries. Four times a year minor and
limited exercises called POSTEX were held on a stop - start basis across
three evenings of a week, Monday to Wednesday. Realistic simulation
material was provided for realtime simulations of a nuclear attack,
including communications and simulated radiation readings.
Approximately every four or five years each group was subjected to a "no
notice" and in depth assessment or Tactical Evaluation, where a
mixed team of UKWMO and ROC full-time staff would appear and evaluate
all aspects of the group's planning and operations under realistic
wartime conditions over a period of 48 hours.
AWDREY
The AWDREY
installation consisted of three separate elements the sensor, the
detection unit and the display cabinet. The sensor contained a number of
photocells and an EMP antenna, it was mounted on the roof of the
building under a polycarbonate protective cover. The detection unit was
installed in a Faraday cage; in the case of the Royal Observer Corps
controls, this was the "Radio Room" that already protected the sensitive
radio equipment from the effects of EMP. As described elsewhere a
nuclear explosion produces a characteristic double pulse of
electromagnetic radiation from low radio frequency up into the
ultraviolet light region. The photocells and EMP antennas collect some
of this energy and pass it via co-axial cables to the detection unit.
Here the pulses are electronically processed to enable differentiation
between those caused by a nuclear explosion and other sources, e.g.
lightning.
The display unit could be mounted anywhere in the building, at ROC
controls it was usually on the balcony adjacent to the Triangulation
Team. The three elements of the installation were connected by
EMP-shielded and heavy duty cabling.
When an explosion was detected a coded message of the form 'TOCSIN
BANG ' YORK : 07.11 : 5 megatons" was recorded and sent to
relevant personnel. The code-phrase TOCSIN BANG indicated that a nuclear
burst had been detected using AWDREY, the location of the detector, in
this case York, the time and the estimated yield of the weapon. The
officer responsible for the AWDREY system at each location was required
to assess the significance of each warning, and issue a confidence
report. The picture shows the York Group Control with the sensor ringed
in red, and the display unit left. There were three panels mounted into
the display 19" rack cabinet. The upper is the timer unit with its
display, in the middle are displays of event time and and bearing. The
lower panel comprises a printer.
The thirteen
ROC AWDREY units were located at the group controls in Exeter, Oxford,
Horsham, Bristol, Colchester, Carmarthen, Shrewsbury, Coventry,
Carlisle, York, Dundee, Inverness and Belfast. This siting pattern
provided sufficient detectors that the entire UK was covered, but the
units were far enough apart that a lightning storm would be unlikely to
trigger simultaneous AWDREY responses at two sites.
The Hole in the Ground
Dramatised account of the work of
the UKWMO made in 1961 and based on a simulated nuclear attack. I
first saw this film in 1964/5 as part of my Civil Defence Corps
training.The film is often misnamed as "Sound an Alarm", this is
because the title frame is missing from some copies, and the name is
taken from the end credits, which show the UKWMO badge with its motto
"Sound an Alarm". The real film by the latter name is shown below.
Sound An Alarm
1971
film showing the work of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring
Organisation (UKWMO) and the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) in the first
week following a small scale nuclear attack on the UK. Filmed largely
at the Horsham Sector Control.
Disbanding
The UKWMO
training effectively ceased in the summer of 1991 after the Home
Secretary's stand down announcement. When the UKWMO was disbanded, and
the ROC stood down, the government referred to "possible future
developments and improvements in automated nuclear explosion and
fallout detection from remote sensors", but it is unlikely that
any such system has yet to be developed or installed. Civil nuclear
defence since 1992 has been devolved to UK local authorities as an
addition to their routine emergency planning responsibilities and under
direction of the government's Civil Contingencies Secretariat but
the air raid alert system no longer operates.
A small
number of fallout monitors have been established throughout the UK, but
they are surface, lightweight constructions built in response to the
Chernobyl incident and of no use in nuclear attack. Some local
authorities also fixed permanent probes for PDRM82F radiation monitors
to the exterior of their control rooms.