1980s : A period of Military Decline :
The growth of tourism and oil service industries cloaked the steady decline of HMS Heligoland and RAF Hallem from the end of the 1970s onwards, with the famous turret guns being officially reduced to museum items by 1987. Radar remained important for air traffic control, but it was becoming clear that the old fkak tower control room was no longer suitable to house a modern traffic-control centre. Germany insisted on having its own control system, after the Heligoland-based control system was considered inadequate and too slow for high-speed modern air combat control. Rather than update Heligoland's facilities, the British Government ran them down; the famous steam catapult of RAF Hallem was scrapped in 1982, replaced by a longer runway and a wing of RAF Bruggen's Tornadoes and Harriers. Royal Navy use of the South Harbour had declined to a pair of minesweepers and two patrol boats, the old submarine pens being used to house them. The rest of the South Harbour and the new anchorage was given over to ferries, merchantmen, pleasure yachts and the support vessels of the oil industry, increasingly German-owned although many were still Heligoland-flagged.
Oil and gas had become major industries in the North Sea and on Heligoland they had become all-important generators of electricity, providers of hot water and sources of employment. The Lunn had a gas-fired turbine power station by 1981, supplemented by an extensive wind-farm on the shoals to the northeast, the waste heat of the gas-turbine being used in a low-pressure desalination still. The fresh water supply of the Lunn was ensured, but the Helgolanders increasingly feared that Germany would dominate their future; the defeat of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands had in 1982 seemed to assure British control of Heligoland, but French and Spanish hostility to Gibraltar - and by extension, to Heligoland - was unabated. Paradoxically, the Germans had no desire to change the status quo of Heligoland, for it had at last been accepted that British ownership would avert the risks of a war; as one Green politician put it, any German politician trying to 're-integrate' the island with Germany was suspected of having intentions that would lead to a third World War.
One highly-secret establishment operated on Helgoland to the complete ignorance of the locals, that being the Communications Intercept Station (Heligoland), located in the northern end of the Lunn, not far from the Bloodhound empklacements. Linked to listening-antenna disguised as fence-wires, this 'listening station' under RAF control was in many ways the excuse for maintaining the defensive missile installation, even to the uprating to Bloodhound III of the entire missile system. The establishment was only revealed when remarks about it were made by a foolish Democrat Senator at a Washington cocktail party, late in 1986. Britain was deeply offended, the Russians were furious and the Germans rather hurt. The Senator had said that Heligoland had been the 'Big Ear' for RAF/USAF Menwith Hill, being conveniently secure and with its own communications links back to Britain. Naturally, the Helgolanders were rather proud of their importance, which explained some of the heavy investment of the post-war years, but it also explained some of the stranger events, such as when the RAF had stopped a smallholder from fitting an electric fence and the restriction of Radio Free Heligoland to certain radio frequencies. Unfortunately, it also re-started acrimony with the pacifist pop enthusiasts; some accused the RAF of being responsible for the Popfesthus fire, although this had already been traced to a fan smoking a reefer and dropping it in some rubbish. It proved necessary for HM Government to issue a statement that intelligence operations remained secret and that RAF CIT (Heligoland) was a safeguard against Warsaw Pact attempts to invade western Europe - a truth that further angered Russia but spiked the guns of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
"Even the neutral nations listen and watch for signs of enemy forces building up to an invasion attempt." The Minister for Defence pointed out. "Heligoland listens. In that sense it is a guarantor of peace."
"So why is Heligoland so heavily armed with missiles and a long runway for strike aircraft?" That was a very left wing remark from Anthony Wedgewood-Benn and drew a frosty look from the Prime Minister. Margaret Thatcher had regarded him as a stool-pigeon for the ultra-left, a voice for Soviet propaganda.
"The Right -" Pause. "- Honourable Member for Chesterfield should remember that the Bloodhound III anti-aircraft missiles defend parts of Denmark and Germany from air attack, as well as Heligoland itself. He may not like it -" Laughter, even from the Labour Benches. "- but as part of NATO we have obligations to our Allies. The runway of RAF Heligoland replaces the defence catapult, and is used by interceptor aircraft to monitor air movements. Strike aircraft are based further forwards and at bases in Britain. These facts have become known. If the Right -" Another pause. "- Honourable Member for Chesterfield has more information that he can prove, I suggest he reports it to the Speaker of this House as a matter of national security." There were hidden teeth in her words; to conceal information from the House could be abuse of parliamentary privilege or even be considered as treason.
CND did try to stage a march in Heligoland but its organisers found the Helgolanders at first ignored them and later poked fun at the banners that called heligoland a nuclear missile site. With direct permission from Margaret Thatcher, the amused RAF No. 217 Squadron (Missile) commander allowed a deputation to wave a Geiger counter near a missile on launch readiness; other than background radiation from the sky and the Bunter sandstone, there was no reading. Correspondents from 'The Observer', 'The Guardian', 'The Times' and 'The Daily Mail', observed the visit and wrote up stories that echoed the laughter of the Helgolanders. The AA missiles were not designed to do more than defend the island from attack and held no radiactive material of any description. When one CND activist tried to use an old radium-dial watch to fake a reading, the reporters blew the scandal into a national story, lampooned by 'The Times' as 'CND Nuclear Attack On Heligoland'. The Heligoland Council declared that it had been assured that at no time had any nuclear weapons been stored or deployed on Heligoland, nor were there any plans to do so; the general tone of 'More in Sorrow than in Anger' had its effect, CND suffering a serious knock to its credibility. Matters went from bad to worse when it was revealed that two CND activists had been found trying to sell pictures of military installations on Heligoland to journalists posing as KGB agents; CND denounced it as a set-up, but the activists had been caught red-handed and spent the next five years in a military prison.
Radio Free Heligoland broadcast to many parts of Northern Europe, being able also to be heard in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and parts of Lithuania and Kaliningrad. Despite persistent Soviet jamming of the German, Danish and Polish language frequencies, RFH managed to broadcast its mixture of pop, advertisement, news and interest-programmes, to many in the Communist bloc. Being a mainline commercial station, rather than a propaganda-organ like Voice of America, RFH became respected almost as much as the BBC World Service, a reliable source of news and information on world events that affected its listeners. Events such as the 'Solidarity' campaign in Poland and the growth of Russian dissent after Afghanistan, were reported and became triggers for the dissent and groundswell of opposition that was to finally disrupt East Germany's frontier defences in 1989.
People from Berlin and Dresden marched to the border with West Germany demanding the right to cross freely between East and West. Initially it appeared to be a way to let the East invade the West, but when thousands of West Germans marched from Hamburg, Braunschweig (Brunswick) and Leipzig, with old pictures of families behind the Iron Curtain, the mood changed. Border Guards were being begged by old and young East Germans to let them through, surrounding the officers and men and easily outnumbering them and forcing them away from their posts by simple pressure of numbers. Radio Free Heligoland was on the scene with its reporters, broadcasting live whilst other stations were trying to decide their editorial slant. Students and former National Volksarmee (NVA) conscripts gradually took over the border crossings and hoisted the black, red and yellow tricolor without the Federal and Bundesrepublik differentiation, dismantling the landmine field triggers and opening the control gates. It was not as impressive as knocking over a wall, but the columns from West and East met and intermingled as families sought each other and hugged. Then NVA officers dared to order mine ploughs out of depots and ploughed mine-free lanes and new crossing-points, whilst the West German authorities and guards looked on in utter astonishment. The West German government asked its counterparts in Berlin what they were up to and discovered that even the notorious Stasi were bewildered and afraid; the Russians were going through their own Soviet collapse, with the Duma using people power to topple the Praesidium and neutralise the KGB by dividing the Army.
The exact circumstances remain obscure, but the East Germans tore the guts out of the border defences when they realised that the West Germans were more than willing to be friends and wanted unity; the government faced crowds that demanded re-integration and refused to consider it impossible. Russian forces might have forced a civil war, except that NVA units physically blocked them in and were trying to exchange liaison officers with the Allied and Bundeswehr units near the East/West frontier and the Czech Army (Armada Ceske Republiky - ACR). This was done mainly by low-level regimental officers of Colonel or Lieutenant-General level, rather than the dumbfounded General Staff. The regimental officers pointed out that a war could start by accident, unless care was taken, so the General Staff used this as an excuse for the widespread collapse of military authority. The Party, the Stasi and the politicians, were faced by a silent revolution and coup that spread throughout East Germany and triggered similar actions in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Russian conscripts had been unwilling to start a battle with the NVA, partly because they were aware that the Poles and Czechs lay between them and Russia, so the Political Officers were unable to motivate officers or men.
Heligoland had watched as the Warsaw Pact began to fall apart, but a shrewd old Helgolander remarked that it was the end of an era; Britain and NATO no longer needed to use Heligoland as a forward radar and monitoring station, much less as a missile site. The oil industry, the pop festivals and tourism, were likely to be the main sources of income. However, the RAF and the Royal Navy did not wish to abandon their valuable forward bases in the Bight, so for the moment it seemed that some services personnel would still spend money on Heligoland. In a choice between running down the Bloodhounds or the Harriers, the Bloodhounds won a reprieve and the Harriers went to RAF Bruggen. The Bloodhound III was showing its age, so there was already discussion about its replacement with the Sea Dart missile, with greater range and higher speed, but this was to be delayed by the 'peace dividend'.
