Former Rockville Air Station (H-1)/DYE-5 DEW Line Radar Site

 demolished, rehabilitation centre, closed, former air force base, early warning radar

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Originally constructed in 1951 as the Sandgerdi Station, a temporary Manual Operations / Master Direction Center for the Iceland Air Defense System (IADS), the station was steadily built up through the mid-1950's until the strategic importance of airspace coverage over the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap warranted the construction of a permanent and modernized facility. With construction commencing in the Spring of 1952, the facility was formally activated as Site H-1/Rockville Air Station on 28 October 1953 and joined a series of four other sites providing radar coverage over all of Iceland and the seas surrounding it.

As the Cold War continued to intensify, further expansion of the site was undertaken in 1956 by US Air Force personnel and members of the 932d Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron, who assumed all radar surveillance duties on 1 August 1957. With the station now equipped with AN/TPS-1B; AN/FPS-3; AN/FPS-20 and two AN/FPS-6 heigh finder radars, the 932d performed Ground-controlled interception (GCI) services for interceptor aircraft based at NAS Keflavik and worked in conjunction with the original H-sites at Langanes, Hofn and Latrar to continually monitor the airspace over Iceland and the GUIK Gap.

The facility reached its peak size by the end of 1957 when it was designated DYE-5, the Easternmost point in the Distant Early Warning (DEW) radar line which at its height stretched across Greenland, Canada and Alaska to its terminus at the COB-1 site at Nikolski in the Western Aleutian Islands in Alaska. As part of the DYE Sector, the site was responsible for airspace monitoring between Iceland and Greenland, where the DYE-4 site at Kulusuk was located. The station was linked to its DEW Line counterparts by troposcatter communications, courtesy of a pair of antennae located at the DYE/NARS Relay site located near Hafnir.

Designated Rockville Aircraft Control & Warning Station following its inclusion to the DEW Line, the station would operate on a continuous 24/7/365 basis for the next forty years before the end of the Cold War and the subsequent drawdown of both US and NATO forces from Iceland reduced the need for the aging facility. Remaining online through the 1992 activation of a new General Surveillance Radar station built to the South, the site ceased radar operations and was officially shut down with the departure of the 932d in October of 1997.

After a year in mothballs, the facility was sold by the US Air Force to private interests and later became Byrgid drug rehabilitation facility, which utilized the former dormitory, administration and recreation facilities of the radar site for eight years before closing in 2007. With US Forces engaged in total withdrawal from Iceland at that time, the site was demolished shortly after.

www.radomes.org/museum/showsite.php?site=Rockville+AS,+...
lswilson.dewlineadventures.com/dye5pics.htm
www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=...