Interview with Patrick J. Collins about the leasing of our airstrip to the Navy

Matthew McCarthy interviews Patrick J. Collins, local author and historian, about the important role of the Royal Canadian Navy from the Harbour Grace airstrip during World War II.

Recorded at Gordon G. Pike Railway Museum on February 11, 2023
Interviewer: Matthew McCarthy
Videographer: Christina Hearn
Duration: 1 minute, 47 seconds

Patrick J. Collins: The Navy sent in 18 servicemen in 1941, and they set up what’s called the, a DF station. Basically, a direction finding station. They created two buildings in on the airfield, the airfield was decommissioned and closed to any traffic. And they set up this station, which was basically a direction finding radar signal, that picked up signals that were sent out from German Submarines that are in the Atlantic trying to knock out the convoy that was, you know, happening between North America and Britain.

PJC: And of course, there were hundreds of ships that were sent, thousands, that were sent in convoys. Well these German submarines would be lurking under the sea, so what the, what the government did, they created this unit in at the airfield that had two sets of people, people with two really sharp sets of skills. One was a receiver, a telegraph receiver, and he would receive the signal and then relay it. There were two shacks, then relay it to another shack. That’s all it was referred to, another shack behind him which had the equipment to send the information to the navy because he would pinpoint it, where this signal was from.

PJC: So first you got the signal, the second guy would pinpoint the coordinates of the signal, where it probably came from, then that was relayed to the command as to where these ships were, these submarines were. So, my understanding from reading the various websites that are on, on this, my understanding is that they actually did save a lot of lives.