YARNOLD SANGER

by

John Hellis

With help from Nigel Dawe

Photographs Graham Matthews

Adapted from an article in `LOOPHOLES` Journal Number 14

No doubt many of you will have noticed the large number of CONCRETE `PIPE` type pillboxes sprouting in military establishments during the last few years. In my experience they appear to be mainly used by the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, though I have no doubt that some of you will have found them on Army sites as well.

It is clear from inspection of one of these that it owes much of its design to the well known WW2 NORCON Pillbox.

Nigel Dawe made some enquiries at an airbase "somewhere in the south of England" as they used to say and was told quite firmly that it was a new design, named after the inventor, the YARNOLD Sanger.

KEY FACTS

The pillbox is made by the Amey Roadstone Corporation (ARC)

It is formed from four (or possibly five) main components: 1. ROOF/FLOOR Section ( I believe these are the same component but they may be different, hence the possibly five!) 2. LOOPHOLE Section with FOUR Loops, equally spaced 3. ENTRY Section 4. BLANK Section

As you can see from the photographs, the loop section has the loops set in its lower edge. This enables two loop sections to be placed together, one upside down and the other the correct way up, giving a larger aperture if required.

I have seen a variety of versions of this set-up. Those at the former RNAS Portland use several blank sections to raise the height of the pillbox. e.g. Floor-Blank-Blank-Floor-Entrance-Blank-Loop, thus raising the pillbox around five feet. Access in this case is via a short ladder.

The photographs below illustrate the most common example.

 

 

Copyright Graham G Matthews@PSG2001