On This Day – 13 April

On this day in 1935, the Treasury released £12,300 for a secret programme to develop radar, then known as Radio Direction Finding (RDF), a significant sum for the time. Robert Watson Watt decided that Orford Ness would be the ideal location for this, due to the isolated nature of the site. Although they had some early successes on the Island, there was limited space and a site with more room for constructing the radar towers was sought. Bawdsey Manor provided the ideal location for this, and it was here that the vital radar technology was developed in secrecy behind the grand façade of the manor from early 1936. RAF Bawdsey, as it was later known, would go on to become the world’s first operational radar station, the Transmitter Block of which now houses Bawdsey Radar museum.