North coast will be next phase of Caithness At War heritage trail

The north coast of Caithness will feature in the next phase of the county’s World World II heritage trail.

Plans to extend Caithness At War beyond Sinclair’s Bay and Wick were outlined at a meeting of Caithness Family History Society this week.

Alistair Jack, chief officer at Caithness Voluntary Group and the driving force behind the trail, gave a 90-minute presentation to an audience of between 40 and 50 in Castlehill Heritage Centre.

Phase one of the project, commemorating the county’s role in the fight against Nazi Germany, was officially opened at Wick John O’Groats Airport in April last year.

It features 46 information panels – 30 located in and around Wick, and 16 in the Sinclair’s Bay area – detailing different aspects of the war and illustrated with archive images.

The project has been delivered jointly by Sinclair’s Bay Trust and Wick Development Trust with funding from the Caithness Beatrice Community Fund.

Mr Jack’s talk ranged from the defences and fortifications that were put in place around Sinclair’s Bay to the many RAF operations from Wick.

And he explained that the next step will be to extend the trail to cover the area from Freswick across to Dunnet.

“Our next bit of trail goes on the north coast,” Mr Jack said. “We’re still trying to identify where the best places are, what the best sites are – there are so many options, and we can’t do them all, because it’s quite costly to put these trails in, so we’re just trying to pick and choose which ones.

“We work with other organisations and this is going to be done under John O’Groats Development Trust. Hopefully, once we’ve done it, we’ll be looking to do one for Castletown – so we’ll be looking for a local organisation to see if they’re interested in being involved.”

There are up to 35 potential World War II sites on that stretch of coastline but this is likely to be narrowed down to about 25. Themes will include the importance of Scapa Flow and the sinking of HMS Royal Oak as well as U-boat attacks and aerial battles.

Mr Jack works closely with Andrew Guttridge as local World War II adviser for the trail and Mr Guttridge was also at Tuesday’s meeting.

Answering questions from the audience, Mr Jack said: “The whole point of the Caithness At War trail is to eventually move across all aspects of the county. It takes a lot of work to do this.

“So many trails that you go on have got a few pictures and they have some words. These panels are quite heavy on information, the reason being we wanted them to be educational.

“If people are interested, they will stop and read them. If people are not so interested, they’ll look at the pictures, read what they want to read, and move on.

“The important thing is that we’re getting the information out there to people about what happened. Our Caithness At War website has all the information from the panels as well.”

Mr Jack also spoke about the long-term aim to create a Caithness Allied Air Forces Memorial at Wick airport. It will include a full-sized replica of Spitfire AA810 and a memorial wall listing the names of all 578 servicemen known to have been lost while operating from Wick, Skitten and Castletown airfields.

“The majority were lost from Wick but 578 is a staggering amount of names,” he said.

In his opening remarks, Mr Jack had emphasised the importance of Caithness to Britain’s wartime defences.

He said: “After the fall of Norway in 1940, there was serious concern that there was going to be an invasion of Britain, and of course there was the fall of France as well.

“The prime candidate for an invasion [from Norway] was Sinclair’s Bay. Reiss and Keiss are large, flat beaches, ideal for landing troops.

“There were three airfields that could be used, at Wick, Castletown and Skitten, and a strategic harbour located at Wick. And because of the single rail track and a winding, narrow road, any sort of counter-attack, if they had managed to get a foothold, would have been almost impossible.

“If the Germans had actually got a foothold in Caithness and had placed bombers and fighters at the airfields, and U-boats at Wick, they’d have cut off the Royal Navy at Scapa Flow and rendered them virtually useless. They would have had control of the entrances into the North Atlantic and the northern North Sea.

“And if they’d launched their aerial attacks at the same time from Caithness and from France, Britain would have been caught in a pincer movement and it’s highly likely that we would have lost the war.”

A member of the audience asked about the cost of a replica Spitfire. “A replica Spitfire is about £40,000,” Mr Jack replied. “It’s a bit less than a real one, though, which is £4 million.”

He added: “We’re still gathering names and Andrew actually identified another one just the other day. We can’t afford to leave a single name out.

“Some of the records are so vague that ultimately it may happen that we will miss people out, but we’re trying not to. So it’s a continuous search for names and checking and re-checking and re-checking... It’s a monumental task but I think one that’s well worth the effort.”

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