SPOKESMAN BOOKS
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Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation
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Catalogue
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Reviews
Fire
over Fylingdales
Blaise
Vyner, Fylingdales – Wildfire and Archaeology, North York Moors
National
Park, 2007, 44 pages, ISBN 978 1 904622 14 3, £5.75
The
journey by road from York to Whitby, on the north-east coast of England, takes
you over the empty uplands of the North York Moors. At the town of Pickering,
a red sign points north towards ‘RAF Fylingdales’. Then the road climbs
steadily, running beside the great declivity known as The Hole of Horcum,
before pitching sharply downwards. There, up on the right, stands a
three-sided, truncated, concrete pyramid at the centre of ‘RAF Fylingdales’.
Fylingdales
provides a major link in the chain that makes up the United States’
Ballistic
Missile Early Warning System that encircles the northern hemisphere. Other
stations in the system are at Thule in Greenland and Clear in Alaska.
Fylingdales sends data directly to US Space Command in Cheyenne Mountain,
Colorado
Springs. It also forms part of a growing network comprising the globally
dispersed anti-ballistic missile system which the US is developing apace,
following President Bush’s unilateral withdrawal, in 2002, from the
Anti-Ballistic
Missile
Treaty which his country had concluded with the Soviet Union thirty years
earlier.
In
September 2003, the North Yorkshire base was almost engulfed. A wildfire swept
across Fylingdales Moor, burning everything in its path. Amidst the ashes of
the vegetation was revealed a variety of ancient features. These included
examples of ‘rock art’ – rocks decorated with cup-marks and other motifs
– some of them dating from the late Neolithic period, 5,000 years ago.
‘The
wildfire presented both an opportunity and a challenge,’ according to Blaise
Vyner, the author of this short account published by the North York Moors
National Park. ‘The opportunity was to record the detail of the archaeology:
the challenge was to do this before the urgent regeneration of the
vegetation.’ Now, according to the author, the overall detail of the
archaeology of Fylingdales Moor is better known than anywhere else on the
North York Moors. Before the fire there were some 150 known archaeological
sites; now there are more than 2,000.
The
fire left a blackened moonscape. This is graphically represented in an
exhibition at Whitby Museum called ‘Fire Over Fylingdales’, for which
project this short guide has been produced. Blackened wood from the Moor forms
naturalistic sculptures. In amongst the photographs of stranded leverets and
displaced hawks there is one of the 120 foot high pyramid, which houses a
solid- state phased-array radar (SSPAR) with a range of 3,000 miles. Above it
flies a Spitfire aircraft, commemorating earlier campaigns. The background is
suffused with orange. The wildfire came very close to the base.
Whose
ballistic missiles might Fylingdales give early warning of? In 2002, members
of Subterranea Britannica, ‘a society devoted to the study and investigation
of man-made … and man-used underground places’, toured the site.
An informative account of their visit posted online (www.subbrit.org.uk)
records that:
‘Our
hosts ran a tape of a missile launch from the Barents Sea which had been
recorded some time earlier and we were able to see the plot appear on screen
and follow the drill and identification of the object to validation point. We
all asked heaps of questions and were told that there had not been a validated
launch call for at least three years although one was made some time ago when
a Soviet Typhoon class submarine launched a test missile from the polar ice
cap towards Russia. Normally all sides involved in test launches of ballistic
missiles notifies (sic) everyone else so as not to cause false alarms of
attack. On this occasion the Russians hadn’t informed anybody and tensions
were said to have been “high”.’
More
tense moments at RAF Fylingdales look likely as the US pushes ahead with plans
to extend its missile defence network by upgrading the facility at Fylingdales
itself, while constructing a completely new radar in the Czech Republic and
installing interceptor missiles in Poland. The Pentagon has also expressed a
wish to place a radar base in the Caucasus. In response, the Russians are
testing new long-range ballistic missiles which they say can beat the
interceptors.
During
the long history of human habitation on Fylingdales Moor, the fortress erected
around RAF Fylingdales surely marks a low point.
Tony
Simpson
