Essex Book Festival, Pennant 750

Cobra Mist

Something I heard: There had been early experiments in radar in Orford and the Ness since 1935, but in the 1960s, a US UK Radar station, Cobra Mist, designed to monitor USSR activity during the Cold War was built here. A string fan antenna of wires spread out towards the northeast with the aim of monitoring aircraft and missiles in Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. After several years of negotiations and then construction, Cobra Mist was complete in 1971; but when the radar was operational in 1973, the signals picked up were so loud that everything was distorted. The waves picked up signals that missiles were being launched from locations where there were no missiles. The radar station was shut down, much to the shock of the workers who had been employed on this pioneering project. After a spell with the BBC World Service as a radio transmitting station, the building is now owned by a private company. Something I wonder about: there are still strange noises on the Ness.