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The underground Royal Navy COMMCEN was established in the old WWII UGHQ tunnels
in the 1956. During the early 1970s it became apparent that the cost of
maintaining and refurbishing the tunnels was becoming prohibitive. Also
the Fort Southwick underground COMMCEN was considered to be a fire hazard
after a fire in a similar installation at RAF Neatishead. In 1974 the
tunnels were closed when a new above
ground COMMCEN was built on Fort Southwick parade.
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NEW
- 27-03-2011
The new COMMCEN computer control 1976. The computer terminals in
the control centre are for an ADX6400 which was was later replaced
with a Tandem VLX.
Photo: Alan Murchie |
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NEW
- 27-03-2011
An aerial photo of Fort Southwick looking north. It shows that the
offices of FOF3 (Flag Officer Third Flotilla) are in use on the
lower right especially when compared with the picture below.
Photo: Alan Murchie |
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NEW
- 14-03-2006 This
is a very unusual aerial photo of Fort Southwick in that it is
taken looking south, towards Portsmouth. The new above ground
COMMCEN is arrowed. Photo:
Jim Boswell |
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The
COMMCEN situated on Fort Southwick's Parade was built in 1973-4. It was closed after its function was moved to Portsmouth
Naval Base in 2001. |
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The
building is not hardened in any way although there is an extensive
air conditioning plant. |
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From
the entrance a corridor runs the entire length of the building.
The rooms on the left were mainly used for operations: Commcen
Ship Room, Traffic Hall, Computer Room and Crypto Workshop. Those
on the right housed conference rooms, plant and services: UPS
room, AC Plant Room, Standby Generator etc.
From
Smudge RN:
...on
the right down a short passage used to be a bit of a kitchen.
This is where someone on the watch used to be conned into
cooking the watch their night time food that was sent up from HMS
Nelson [in Portsmouth Naval Base].
Normally it finished up being stew or corned beef hash
which normally did the job |
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This
was the main operations area: the Traffic Hall with the door on
the left leading to the Commcen Ship Room. The small hatch that can be seen
on the left led to the “Special Handling Cell”. This was usually manned by just one
person whose job was to work with any higher than normal security signal traffic. Photo
interpreted by Smudge - RN |
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NEW
- 14-03-2006
Jim
Boswell (1995) checking the status of the computer on the engineering
printer in the Traffic Hall (the same view as in the above photo).
The special handling hatch is over his left shoulder. Jim worked
in the Commcen on odd occasions from 1975 doing installation work
and settled there in1994 until the move to HM Naval Base
Portsmouth from where he retired in 2002. Photo:
Jim Boswell |
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NEW
- 14-03-2006
Jim
Boswell working on the Plugging Jackfield. All the lines in and out of the
Commcen terminated on one half of the cabinet and all the local equipment on the
other. This made it possible to patch any equipment to any line.
The entrance to the Naval Digital Network is behind him. This was a digital network linking all the
Commcens and other sites using routers that automatically used the best route and bypassed any parts of the system that were faulty
. The phones on the right were the last ditch communications if
all else failed. Photo:
Jim Boswell |
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Leading
off from the room in the photo above is the Computer Room. The
holes in the floor indicate where a Mainframe once stood. This was
run in tandem with with another machine so if one went down the
other took over There are acoustic panels on the wall and all sounds
are deadened. Photo
interpreted by Smudge - RN |
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click
the arrow |
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