Memories of the Second World War.
Yatton and District – Second World War Home Guard
More information has become available about the following Home Guard photographs
Fooling the Luftwaffe
As the Luftwaffe bombing threat became more potent in England, particularly after the devastating night raids on Coventry on 14th -15th November 1940, two new types of decoy were devised. They were QL and QF sites and Kingston Seymour had been designated a combined QL and QF decoy site- The latter sometimes reference as SF or Starfish.
Of the 18 QL and QF sites built to protect Bristol and Avonmouth, four are in the vicinity of Clevedon- Kingston Seymour, Priddy, Downside and Kenn Moor.
The L stood for lighting, the F for fire and the Q (or sometimes S) was the code designation. In the case of the QL sites, they were designed to mimic the reaction of an industrial area to a bombing raid. Lights would be dimmed or extinguished as they were in the case of factories and military installations.
In simulating this, the idea was to draw bombs away from the real targets and onto areas where little harm could be done. The larger scale QF sites came into play slightly later on the timeline. They would be lit after the bombs had hit the real target in the hope that at least some of the aerial attack could be diverted.
Kingston Seymour did indeed see bombs dropped in various places, perhaps due in part to the decoy site.
This topic was covered in more detail in a presentation to the Historical Society on 29th November 2022.