Radar Station

Did you know there was once an Air Force station in Winston-Salem? Winston-Salem AFS was a radar station in operation from 1956-1970 at 1935 Union Cross Rd. 

When you drove by the station you could see the radar domes and the massive concrete tower with a huge rotating dish antenna on top. The tower was 84.5 feet high,about 8-stories, and the rotating antenna reflector was 120 feet across and 50 feet high. The antenna, including all rotating parts, weighed 85 tons. The antenna had lights around its perimeter, so at night you could see the rotating lights. 

After the Air Force upgraded the station to a new radar system in 1962, the new high-power long-range signal began causing interference with nearby civilian AM and FM radios. I can remember driving around the southeast part of town and hearing a beep on the radio every few seconds (the radar antenna made a full rotation every 12 seconds). During the late 1960s the base was visited by both Club and Boy Scout troops as part of a Merit Badge exercise.

Activation

Beginning in the 1930s, the US spent billions of dollars building early-warning radar systems — often in the most remote parts of the world —  to detect aerial attacks on the US mainland from the Soviet Union or other hostile forces. Though not exactly in a remote location, Winston-Salem AFS was one of those stations. 

In 1954, Winston-Salem AFS was established by Air Defense Command as one of a planned deployment of forty-four Mobile radar stations to support the permanent ADC Radar network in the United States.  Funding, constant site changes, construction, and equipment delivery delayed deployment. In 1956, the 810th Aircraft Control & Warning (AC&W) Squadron moved from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to a new 22 acre site located near Winston-Salem, NC. The station became operational on 1 December 1956. The station had approximately 20 civilians and 150 military personnel to operate the site. 

The site opened with an AN/MPS-11 search radar and an AN/FPS-6A height finder radar. Initially the station functioned as a Ground-Control Intercept (GCI) and warning station to guide interceptor aircraft toward unidentified intruders picked up on the unit's radar scopes.

Upgrades

Over the coming years the 810th's equipment was upgraded several times to finally include some of the largest and most sophisticated radar equipment ever conceived, along with then state of the art computers and communications equipment to process the data from the radar sets and feed it back to NORAD. 

The site was redesignated as 810th Radar Squadron SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) on 1 March 1962. SAGE was a system of large computers and associated networking equipment that coordinated data from many radar sites and processed it to produce a single unified image of the airspace over a wide area. The site was one of twelve sites in the country where the new AN/FPS-24 radar systems were installed.

Deactivation

As these radar sites became increasingly obsolete by the emergence of satellite communications and other technical advances and weapon system changes, they began being deactivated. On July 31, 1970, the 810th and the station were deactivated as part of a military budget cutting process at the time.

Today

Today, little remains of the old radar station. The large concrete tower still stands but its impressive 120 foot wide dish antenna is gone as well as all the equipment it once contained. Part of the site is now Union Cross Park with various athletic fields and courts. Some of the former station’s buildings are now used for local community and light industrial purposes.