Warmtoast
28th May 2007, 11:49
As a VHF/DF operator I was based at RAF Gan in the Maldives from January to November 1958. Gan had two HF/WT circuits for connection to the outside world: an “Admin” circuit to RAF Katunayake (Negombo) Sri Lanka (Ceylon) for routine matters and an “Ops” circuit for communication with aircraft / ships etc.
Most times HF/WT comms worked well except for the occasion in late-August and early-September 1958 when contact with Ceylon was lost for several days. This resulted from Operation Argus, the secret detonation by the Americans between 27 August 1958 and 6 September 1958, of three low yield (1.7 kt W-25 nuclear warheads) 300-miles high in the upper atmosphere over the South Atlantic in order to assess how very high-altitude nuclear detonations could interfere with the magnetosphere and the Van Allen radiation belts and how it such blasts would affect long-range H/F communications - in the event as far as Gan was concerned the detonatons did and badly!
The absence of comms at RAF Gan for a couple of days caused a major upset as we didn’t know what was going on and with no communication to the outside world had no way of knowing! Things returned to normal a couple of days later. As far as I can recall there was never an “official” explanation as to what had caused the comms blackout.
At the time I was one of the operators who operated the RAF Gan amateur radio station VS9MA and communications on the amateur radio bands was disrupted too. When things returned to normal there was much speculation on the HAM bands as to the cause of the disruption, most theories centring on solar activity having disrupted the ionosphere.
Anyway I’ve been trying to find at the National Archives at Kew any files relevant to this event. The RAF Katunayake and RAF Gan station files are singularly uninformative, but I feel sure that there must have been some official British recording of this event, if only because Katunayake was host to a Signals Relay Unit for communications between the UK and Singapore, and I assume the SU main circuits to the Far East would have been affected in addition to the Katunayake – Gan circuit.
The Argus explosions created artificial electron belts which lasted for several weeks. Do a Google search for “Operation Argus” for more info.
Anyway the reason for this post is to ask whether anyone has any idea where the appropriate UK official papers regarding this event can be found. If not in the National Archives, where?
Most times HF/WT comms worked well except for the occasion in late-August and early-September 1958 when contact with Ceylon was lost for several days. This resulted from Operation Argus, the secret detonation by the Americans between 27 August 1958 and 6 September 1958, of three low yield (1.7 kt W-25 nuclear warheads) 300-miles high in the upper atmosphere over the South Atlantic in order to assess how very high-altitude nuclear detonations could interfere with the magnetosphere and the Van Allen radiation belts and how it such blasts would affect long-range H/F communications - in the event as far as Gan was concerned the detonatons did and badly!
The absence of comms at RAF Gan for a couple of days caused a major upset as we didn’t know what was going on and with no communication to the outside world had no way of knowing! Things returned to normal a couple of days later. As far as I can recall there was never an “official” explanation as to what had caused the comms blackout.
At the time I was one of the operators who operated the RAF Gan amateur radio station VS9MA and communications on the amateur radio bands was disrupted too. When things returned to normal there was much speculation on the HAM bands as to the cause of the disruption, most theories centring on solar activity having disrupted the ionosphere.
Anyway I’ve been trying to find at the National Archives at Kew any files relevant to this event. The RAF Katunayake and RAF Gan station files are singularly uninformative, but I feel sure that there must have been some official British recording of this event, if only because Katunayake was host to a Signals Relay Unit for communications between the UK and Singapore, and I assume the SU main circuits to the Far East would have been affected in addition to the Katunayake – Gan circuit.
The Argus explosions created artificial electron belts which lasted for several weeks. Do a Google search for “Operation Argus” for more info.
Anyway the reason for this post is to ask whether anyone has any idea where the appropriate UK official papers regarding this event can be found. If not in the National Archives, where?