TEGWRA (TERA) Ty Croes, Anglesey Trials Establishment Guided Weapons Royal Artillery Author: Terry MARGETTS Notes in italics are added to assist any reader who is unfamiliar with the terminology Why the need? The Army needed to have a facility where it could examine all aspects of modern guided weapons that would be used by the Royal Artillery. For long-range surface-to-surface weapons the base at South Uist in the Hebrides was built in conjunction with the Benbecula Air base. This was used for testing the ‘Corporal’ weapon (a US development of the German V2) and followed on with other shorter range battlefield weapons. ‘Corporal’ had a range of 60 to100 miles where ‘LANCE’ had a shorter range of a few miles. ‘Corporal’ missile - http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/systems/corporal/welcome.html ‘Lance’ missile - http://www.manuelsweb.com/lancemissile.htm For anti-aircraft needs, there were two weapon configurations to consider. There was the conventional gun and in my time in the service this was the L40/70 Bofor. It had a predecessor, the L40/60. This was the main weapon for defending against low-flying aircraft. By low-flying I mean below 5000 feet. I served with 34 LAA (Light Anti-Aircraft) on their tour of Singapore/Penang/Hong Kong and Aden during 1960/1963 and the 40/70 was a good weapon to have. In the UK there were two main “firing camps” Tonfanau (near Tywyn or Towyn, Merioneth) and Manorbier (between Tendy and Pembroke in Pembrokeshire) both in Wales and both in good locations for the relatively short range AA gun. Bofors anti-aircraft gun - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_40_mm_gun However as weapons progressed or man’s ability to dream up more fiendish ways of destroying mankind, there was a need to develop Surface-to-Air Guided Weapons (SAGW which became SAM surface-to-air missile). This was because the pesky Russians had high-flying long-range bombers that we needed to be capable of destroying. In true British style, the government put out for tender the concept of a weapon system to be able to protect the British Isles. Both the Army and the “blue jobs” (RAF) wanted to defend us so there was a good old British compromise. Two systems were developed, one as a fixed location system for the RAF and a mobile system for the Army. The RAF system was based on the ‘Bloodhound’ missile and the Army one based on the ‘Thunderbird’ missile. There were some common parts used on the missiles, the warhead was common as was the boosts that got the vehicle up in the air but there were great differences. The RAF missile flew like an aircraft. To make a turn the missile would use roll and turn to point toward the direction it needed to go. The ‘Bloodhound’ used liquid fuel for its ram-jets. The ‘Thunderbird’ was a real missile in that once it was on its own, it rolled continuously in flight. This meant that the control system for steering the missile was continually operating and it was claimed that it could respond quicker to changes in the target. The ‘Thunderbird’ was a solid-fuel motor. Just like the rockets we send into the sky each November 5^th but a little more powerful. The motor’s job was to sustain flight speed. The boosts that were fitted around the missile before launch and for the first 2.5 seconds or so of flight got the missile up to its attack speed of mach 2.5 to 3. The concept was that the missile would always dive on to its target, so if the aircraft was at 60,000 feet the missile would see this and get higher. ‘Bloodhound’ missile - http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/bloodhound/bloodhound1.htm ‘Thunderbird’ missile - http://www.braw.co.uk/thunderbird/thunderbird.htm Before a weapon gets into service there is lots of R&D (research and development) that has to be carried out. For example the boosts were test fired at Shoeburyness and in Australia. They would be fitted to a dummy missile, full size, proper shape, and full weight but inert and fired to see if they could do the job. Once this was done, out to Aussie to fly some real missiles but still development work would be needed. We had a large test set-up out at Woomera which is up-country from Adelaide (South Australia). It was there we tested our ‘Blue Streak’ missiles etc. Woomera is now used as a refugee camp I understand. Once everyone was happy that the different systems would do their jobs, then they had to make it all work together. Woomera Rocket Range - http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~woomera/map.htm ‘Blue Streak’ missile - http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/6133/bluestreak.html Let’s refresh our minds of the anti-aircraft problem. Here we are sitting in our garden looking at a plane going overhead wondering where it was going and where it had come from. Clearly the Army need to know the answer to the same question so we need a big radar. Bigger and better that the 4Mk7 radar from early post-war and don’t forget it has to be portable so it can go anywhere the Army needs it. So we ended up with giant radar with very long range and it could all be taken apart and fit into an aircraft (or two). So we know where the planes are coming from and probably going to (high-flying aircraft cannot turn too quickly) but being the Army we need a “Chain of Command”. The radar data was to be sent to the Battery Control Post. This was the Centre were decisions were made as to who was going after this aircraft. The Battery Control Post controlled several Launch Control Posts which in turn had several missile launchers attached to it. Also local to the Launch Control Post was the TIR (Target Illuminating Radar). It was this beastie that would be given a target to illuminate so that accurate data could be created to feed to the Launch Control Post and to the missile prior to launch. The radar would lock on to the target. The missile could sit on its launcher for days ready to go. When the missile took off (with great noise, awesome speed and sheer disbelief) the launcher could receive another missile in a matter of minutes. It was a case of “cock gun – mag magazine) off - mag on - close bolt - carry on firing” type of routine. The gunners were pretty expert at that. So each Regiment could have two to three Battery Control Posts each with three to four Launch Control Posts which each had three to four launchers. Because of the range of the missiles and the radar one could envisage two to three Regiments looking after the whole of the east coast. You have to remember this was in the time when we had a real RAF with some of the best planes in the world - Lightning P1, Sea Vixen, Buccaneer, V-Bombers, Beverly and Argossy freighters, Gnat trainers, etc. Where was Ty Croes? It was and still is on the west coast of Anglesey, just off the A4080. The A4080 is the west coast road from Llanfair PG to Newborough, Maltreath, Aberffraw to Rhosneigr back to the A5. The camp was between Aberffraw and Burial Chamber Bay. Now signposted as a Motor Racing Circuit. Another way is to locate Ty Croes station and follow the road south-west to a cross roads and go straight across the cross roads - stop before the sea!
So what was my part in this great plan? Having come home from three years in the warmer climes of FARELF (Far East Land Forces) I was posted to 4^th Armoured Workshop, Detmold (West Germany). My golly, was Germany cold! However I was given the task of converting the first Centurion tank in BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) to infra-red lights for night driving and firing. After the first one, there were six more to do before they went for trials. We received these mod (modification) kits and laid it all out and wondered what we had let ourselves in for. There seemed like millions of parts. We were given a tank and off we went. The drawings we were given bore no resemblance to the tank we had so we had to knife-and-fork (improvise) everything. The first tank took about five weeks to fit but it looked great with four headlights and a big lamp on top of the turret. The worst bit was aligning the main armament with the lamp beam. There is adjacent to 4^th Armoured Workshop an airfield (used by the Army Air Corps) so we took our tank up on to the airfield and lined up the main armament on the hand of Hermann’s sword-hand on a monument (Hermann’s Denkmal) some miles away. With the gun aligned we switched on the searchlight and aligned that to the same point. All we had to do was to drill two dowel-holes in the turret to locate the lamp. The turret is armoured steel and the drills were not very good but after three nights we got the job done. The following tanks we fitted up much quicker and I was posted to - where? Ty Croes.	Photograph: George MILLIE (above) Hermann’s Denkmal (Statue), a symbol of German unity, erected 1838-1873. Called “Hermann’s Dinkle Donkle” by British Servicemen of the era. A prominent landmark and navigation aid on a hilltop overlooking Detmold.
Photograph: George MILLIE
Detmold British Army Camp with aircraft hangars and airfield in the N.W. quarter of the photograph
Before actually joining Ty Croes I was going on a course. This started at SEE (School of Electronic Engineering) (no longer 5 Battalion) Arborfield. A group of us met at Arborfield and it was explained to us we were going to BAC (British Aircraft Corporation) at Stevenage for our training at their training school on Six Hills Way. We were going to be staying in civilian digs (accommodation) and for all intents and purposes we would be civilians for six months. The course was very good and the team spirit that was generated was great for morale. Half of the course members were from Ty Croes and we were going to be the first people trained on the Version 2 of ‘Thunderbird’ missile. Hence (SAGW2). The missile had been improved from the earlier version with better guidance and control system, bigger motor, better aerodynamics etc. First big surprise at Ty Croes was how many REME (Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers) people were there and how few RA (Royal Artillery). There were a few RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corps) ammunition technicians, and loads of WRAC (Women’s Royal Army Corps) radar operators. I am sure that the REME contingent outnumbered all the other units put together. I was assigned to the Missile Building on arrival at Ty Croes. The building was (and still is) at the bottom of the hill and well away from anyone else. It is funny to look back on now but the fact that we could be handling explosive materials on occasions never concerned me - probably because of the training and the standards of safety were very high. This building was where missiles were assembled for any purpose. All were built to the same physical standard, i.e. good enough to fly even if one was only being used to train people. The building was TOP SECRET, no one was allowed in the building without positive vetting and other approval. All the waste paper was classified as Top Secret and was disposed of in the Top Waste Incinerator and duly signed that all material was correctly destroyed. All the EMERs (Electrical & Mechanical Engineering Regulations) were in red binders and were to be signed for if one was required. There was an explosive limit in the building. This meant that when you entered the work area you attached a special tag. When all the tags were taken, no one else could enter the work area - supposedly in case of a big bang, they would know how many bodies they were looking for! Working in the area was great. There was a good team, we all got on well, we had good times and bad but overall it was good. The building was given several tasks to do. As part of the overall concept of ensuring that the equipment was suitable for the purpose for which it was designed, we got hold of some great and some crappy kit. The APLE (Air Portable Lifting Equipment) was a hydraulic-powered crane. To look at, it was like any crane of the day but this one had been squashed. The missile when fully built up prior to flight is big, 20-odd feet long, weighs a few tons and this lump has to be lifted from its transporter-trailer on to the launcher. The ability to position the “load” to parts of an inch was important. So our building got the job of testing this kit. We had a couple of great Fitters Gun, Pat Rice and Paul Barbara, and it was Pat who I remember took the APLE under his wing. He got the hang of not only driving the vehicle but also controlling the lifting tackle. The APLE had a remote control box attached to the vehicle with an umbilical cable. Pete mastered the technique of remembering which control did what as he walked around the vehicle when he was using it to lift missiles up and on to the launcher. He also had the patience of Job when it became his task to train others. Real nice guy. His mate Paul originally came from Malta I believe. He had the first Renault 16 on Anglesey. This was the very first MPV, a car that could become a bed, an estate car etc. The building was the Centre for all the trials concerning the ‘Thunderbird 2’ missile programme. The trials were many and were given a letter reference. The worst one was the ‘Q’ trials. This was to study the effect of long-term storage on the missile and the frequency of tests that needed to be done on the missiles to maintain a state of preparedness. The missile had a series of connectors on the rear-end mounted radially around the rear plate. Most of these connectors were electrical but some were hydraulic, some were cooling air and some pneumatic pressure hoses. To hook up a missile to its connectors in the test configuration could take twenty minutes. All these connectors had to be quick-release connectors. There was no method of making a permanent attachment and this was the problem - you would get most connected and one would fall out - loud gnashing of teeth and Anglo Saxon technical terms being used. The ‘Q’ trials required the building to take twenty-seven missiles and perform a series of tests, record the results over a period of six months. It meant that we had to be working seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day for the period. Shift work was inevitable but we proved beyond doubt that if the Army wanted to get rid of its highly trained technicians - put them on ‘Q’ trials. Three of us left Ty Croes as a result of ‘Q’ when our ROD (run out date/discharge) came about. The fun times came with the live firings. Half of the crew of our building were ex-Woomera and they had seen it all before - you know the story - got the knees brown east of Suez - swing the lights, get the tin helmets out. Some of us had seen film and some were virgins and did not know what to expect. Prior to any launch we used to fire a small five-inch rocket to measure cloud base. When I saw my first five-inch go up I was impressed - just like NASA, there is a countdown on the PA all over the site. “5-4-3-2-1” and whoosh, up she goes. Also on V103 the first live UK firing of a ‘Thunderbird 2’ there was the countdown “5-4-3-2-1 Fire” and you hear the missile’s generator fire up and then BANG ROAR LIGHT as this large object leaps out of the ground and tears off skyward - but disaster - after four seconds or so the missile breaks up, Range Safety also pressed the ‘Destroy’ button and instead of having four spent boosts dropping seaward, we also had a somewhat broken missile powering itself into the sea - and out again and back in to go on motoring around the bed of the Irish Sea until the solid fuel motor gave up all its energy. Shock horror in our building - we built the b… d…, what on earth went wrong? I had not mentioned earlier but we had a small section of civilian telemetry people in our building and they would provide us with a telemetry pack to insert to every flight missile. Pete Dickerson led the team and Idris was his right-hand man. The telemetry recording all was monitored up the hill at the launch area. After this disaster, Peter came down and told what had happened. A short time after launch, a 24-volts DC supply had become disconnected inside the missile and the control surfaces on the rear of the missile had gone hard-over to maximum turn condition which damaged the missile so badly it was breaking up. The Royal Navy turned up next day with a minesweeper and recovery team. Within a month they had got almost everything back on land for us to look at, the BAC engineers soon found the problem, modifications were made and the problem never occurred again. The live-firing season was generally in the summer time and one afternoon we launched three missiles. Great fun seeing an aircraft destroyed in the sky some fifty to sixty miles away and the resulting ball of flame and debris said - another job well done. Some may draw the conclusion that it’s a bit childish - perhaps it is but in the real Army most of life is training, exercising, going through the motions and only very seldom does one get the opportunity to do the job that you are trained to do. One of the other trials we had to do was to erect the missile test-shelter and railway. To test a missile requires two vehicles and their trailers. The larger vehicle was the MTV (Missile Test Vehicle) and the smaller one (a Land Rover) was the STV (Sensitivity Test Vehicle). The MTV was typically connected to the rear of the missile and the STV was sighted to the nose of the missile. The missile to be tested has to have all its explosives removed and prior to entering the test area - all totally reasonable. The missile test-shelter consisted of a large canvas tent. To provide some strength to this floppy structure the boffins had invented the inflatable tube. If I remember there were five of these tubes that were about ten to twelve inches in diameter and thirty feet long. They were located into the canvas by open canvas gullies which were closed by lacing ropes along these gullies to retain the yet to be inflated tubes. The lacing worked quite well just as a shoelace works with the foot. So you have this large area of canvas and the tubes laced into it and now it’s time to inflate the tubes. Along came the Fitters with a compressed-air bottle, a big one, but as we were to find out not big enough. The bottle was connected and valve opened; a great deal of noise and virtually nothing happened. These tubes were going to need a huge volume of air. We eventually erected the tent alongside our building, assembled the railway, built the build-trolley on to the railway, brought out the necessary vehicles, cables, generator, and mountains of equipment and tried to test missiles. (The building, I should point out, was about five yards from the top of cliffs which are about 100 feet above the Irish Sea facing southwest. The prevailing wind was from the SW and the winter gales also came from that direction. The location proved to be an ideal test area because salt water is highly corrosive and will find its way into equipment etc). One slight matter we had not foreseen in the planning of the tent location was the total lack of level ground. When we laid the railway, narrow-gauge with pucker (genuine) steel sleepers etc, it did not occur to us that a fully-armed missile mounted on a steel trolley adapted to suit that narrow-gauge track was a formidable rolling force under the influence of gravity. Of course we duly lowered our first missile on to the trolley to push it into the tent and the bugger rolled backward and only a large piece of wood saved the day. The powers that be took note of our comments about the erection and the viability of this wonderful tent and somehow devised a plan to take this tent to the camp sports field and erect it there. Not content with this challenge, it was to be done at night under “battle conditions” i.e. no lights. We were allowed our personal torch - those stupid green jobs with the right-angled head that emitted as much light as a modern standby LED (light-emitting diode). So off we went the Friday night to erect this tent thing. To hold it down required 100-off three-feet ground anchors (same as used on Scammel recovery vehicles) hammering into the ground to provide the fundamental location or all the webbing guys. The process of driving into the earth these ground pegs took most of the night. By dawn we had the tent up and could start on the railway and the test kit and by lunchtime the job was done. It took twice as long as it was supposed to, on pristine cricket pitch level ground, and with a good team of men. In typical Army fashion, once it was built we took it down but not before a ‘Sea King’ helicopter from RAF Valley just down the coast a step, came along and sat on top of our tent to try to blow it down and failed. I had decided to come out of the Army in 1967 after nine years of costing the government money that it should perhaps have spent on other things. There were some good times and bad, and many very kind and thoughtful people - a great pity we are scattered all over the world.
The Site In 2006
The new race track for 2007 is under construction

The Site In 2007

Information added from the very early days of Ty-Croes

First Published: 1^st August 2007

Latest Update: 15th April 2009

---