RAF Garth's Ness

RAF Garth's Ness was a NATO LORAN A radio navigation station active during the Cold War. It was situated on Garth's Ness, a headland on the southwestern coast of Mainland, the largest island in Shetland, Scotland. The station operated between 1961 and 1977 . The facility comprised two interconnected buildings: the southern structure functioned as the operational center, while the northern one served as barracks. The compact size of the complex indicates it likely accommodated a staff of around a dozen people.

LORAN A (Long Range Navigation, version A) was an early radio navigation system developed during World War II to provide long-range positioning for ships and aircraft. Operational from the 1940s to the 1980s, it used low-frequency radio signals transmitted by ground-based stations to determine a receiver's location based on the time difference between signals received from multiple stations. LORAN A offered accuracy within a few miles, sufficient for wartime and early peacetime navigation. The system consisted of a master and slave station that formed a chain, with each slave synchronized to transmit a signal at a precise time delay after the master. By measuring the time difference between the received signals, users could plot hyperbolic lines on a chart, indicating their position .

RAF Garth's Ness slave was located in Newton Point, England .