Second World War upper air observations by the Fleet Air Arm in the Orkney Islands

摘要

Unless they have lived on the Orkneys few people will ever have heard of the tiny hamlet of Hatston, just north of Kirkwall on mainland Orkney. Yet during the first months of the Second World War, Fleet Air Arm (FAA) aircrew of 771 Squadron, flying from the Royal Naval Air Station (RNAS) Hatston, provided the only upper air temperature data for the United Kingdom north of Aldergrove. Later, once a network of upper-air stations had been established, the same aircrew continued their daily ascents, providing supplementary data, first from Hatston, and later from RNAS Twatt (Figure 1). Almost invariably known as 'met flights' or 'met climbs' by the aircrew, their meteorological codename was THUM'. The term was introduced in 19371 and derives from Temperature and Humidity - the temperatures being measured during a sortie and the humidity being calculated later before the data were coded for distribution to the meteorological network.