It’s 1942 and you’re sitting in the Orcadia cinema at HMS Tern  waiting to see “The Spy in Black”.   Despite the ventilation fans the air is thick with cigarette smoke and the heat rising from the couple hundred others in the auditorium.  But before the main feature, you have to sit through an information film about King George VI.

“They didn’t know who he was.” says Lyndsey Bailey , my guide. “He wasn’t supposed to be king.” 

She’s referring to the abdication of Edward VIII abruptly putting George VI on the throne.

Eighty years on and this film was discovered in a box of canisters donated to the museum. They’ve been touch with the National Archive but they have no record of it.  HMS Tern has the only copy.

The old projectors can no longer be brought back to life.  But the film has been digitised, and a modern projector mounted on the old equipment plays it in a loop  – the same film, same room, eighty years on.

Moving out of the cinema we can see the shape of the control tower on the horizon.   No other Fleet Air Arm station had the control tower on top of the operations room as you can see from the air. Inside another unusual feature remains unexplained.

The Operations Room is where plotters add markers to a map showing where your aircraft and the enemy are.  This is based on bits of paper handed through the signals room hatch which you see at the back of the room.

Lyndsey points to what looks like a concrete kitchen worktop across the middle of the Operations Room.

“We’re having a bit of difficulty with this one because it’s not on the original plan.  It really should have been just one big open building.  But for some reason, we’ve got this in the middle of it.”

There’s a photo, dated 1942, of men with a barrel of beer in front of the worktop .  So we know it appeared within a year of the station opening.  But why? Nobody knows.

Lyndsey and the volunteers have a dream to make HMS Tern into a living museum where people can experience a connection to the past.  The site is generally open for you to look around but for the best experience go when volunteers are present to help you. 

Full details can be found on their website hmstern.co.uk  

I saw much more on this visit than I’ve covered here.  I’ll certainly be back for more.