Famous Old Radio Mast Gone.

Wheelnut

Since about 1930 the twin radio masts just outside Athlone have been landmarks. They could be seen by anyone travelling from Dublin to Galway. Just today I noticed that one of the masts was gone. I made some enquiries and I'm told that RTE had it knocked two mornings ago.

The masts were an unusual design. They were not fixed in the ground, instead they came to a point at the bottom like a pencil and stood on steel balls. The stay wires kept them in position. Now, instead of lowering the mast they just cut the stay wires so that the mast collapsed and was smashed on the ground.

These masts had a secret part in our history during WW2. During the war Radio Eireann continued to broadcast from the station and both the masts and the signal were used for navigation by aircraft. The British were anxious to stop the Germans navigating by the masts so they are alleged to have had a secret arrangement with Develera's government whereby the Radio Eireann signal was fed to the BBC and they set up decoy radio transmitters with the signal. This was to send the German planes in the wrong direction.

Ireland was supposed to be nuetral at the time so there is nothing in the public arena about this. However there is a story that people on the east coast who normally had bad reception from Athlone because of the Wicklow mountains had great reception during the war (from the decoy transmitters) and as soon as the war ended they lost their signal.

Now RTE have destroyed this part of our history without consultation and it can not easily be restored because the mast has been smashed. The original Marconi transmitter is still on the site together with the later Brown Boveri and Continental transmitters. All are still intact and are beautiful pieces of old equipment. Let's hope it does not go the same way as the mast.

Here's a link to a site which has about 24 pictures of the old equipment:
http://homepage.eircom.net/~totalbroadcast/athlone2.html