In that the Red Cliff facility was largely built of reinforced concrete, most of the primary buildings were still relatively intact, and still enclosed from the elements except for the absence of windows, which had been removed. Only the walls of lesser buildings were still standing, however, while in some cases all that remained were building foundations. The road system at the facility was still intact and in fairly good shape, while what looked somewhat like manhole covers were visible near various buildings. The concrete on some of the buildings ranged from severely damaged to not damaged at all, with the level of damage seeming to depend on the thickness of the concrete itself.
The training for our TQ1 course at the Red Cliff facility involved teams of infantrymen searching the various buildings for senior instructors who used their knowledge of the buildings interiors to take up hiding and ambush positions in the many dark spaces, interior partitions, ledges, etc., and on the roof and around the exterior of the buildings. All training was conducted using blank 7.62 mm and 9 mm ammunition, CS gas (an irritant gas similar to tear gas, but much more virulent), Thunderflashes (a pyrotechnic device which explodes to simulate a grenade blast), and Pains-Wessex smoke grenades. In that we were not allowed to use flashlights, as a police officer would use in entering a darkened building, my most outstanding memory of the CQB/FIBA training was how difficult it was to locate the aggressors inside the pitch-dark recesses of the Red Cliff radar facility, a task made all the more difficult while crawling over occasional rubble and items of abandoned furniture by the ever-present roar of Thunderflash explosions, the rattle of small arms fire, the sting of CS gas, and shouting from individual infantrymen and instructors.
Since this first rude introduction to Red Cliff, the 1st Battalion of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and various other Canadian Army Primary Reserve units based in the St. Johns area have continued to use the abandoned facility to hone their expertise in CQB/FIBA. Troops from the 56th Field Engineer Squadron have also practiced tunneling and cratering at the facility on a limited scale, using C4 plastic explosive to blow man-sized holes through the reinforced concrete. The purpose of this training is to not only learn how to blow unanticipated entry points into defended buildings to gain quick and violent entry, but also to learn how to quickly build mouse holes which may be used by defending troops in a secured building to quickly move from one room, floor or level to another, thereby eliminating the need to use obvious and easily attacked external points of entry on the outsides of buildings.
I should note that as a consequence of the excellent training provided to the Regiments troops at the Red Cliff facility, for two years in a row (1997/1998) the Regiment has been selected by the Canadian Army to send a contingent of infantrymen to one of the American bases in Florida at the invitation of the United States Army. This base (sorry, I dont remember the name) has extensive facilities for training in CQB/FIBA. From talking to current members of the Regiment, and from press coverage in the Evening Telegram, the Regiments American hosts have been surprised to learn that the Regiments troops are part-time volunteer Reservists (mostly employed as police officers, fire fighters, prison guards etc.), and not full-time members of the Regular Force. The Americans have also been surprised at the proficiency and competence of the St. Johns-based infantrymen. It is interesting to reflect (and the Americans would probably find it ironic) that it is an abandoned American radar facility which is providing the physical platform for the training and development of our local Canadian Army Primary Reserve infantrymen, leading to their outstanding performance on American soil.
About a year ago, I took an individual walk around the Red Cliff facility, and noticed that some of what looked like simple manhole covers have now been pried open. From the outside, what is visible is a concrete shaft leading downwards, with many exit/entry railings sunk into the concrete and a door at the bottom. This, obviously, was part of an underground tunnel system. I was certainly impressed by the amount of tunneling that would have to take place through solid rock to build such an infrastructure. In my opinion, such extensive work would only have been carried out to protect against the effects of a nuclear blast, and not simply to protect against the elements. Certainly, the thickness of concrete in the above-ground structures, and the abandoned raft mountings where mechanical and electrical equipment once was positioned inside the buildings, indicated that blast hardening was a primary consideration in their construction.
This detail is extracted from a letter written by Pete Locke, St. Johns Newfoundland on April 28th, 1998. It provides the reader with an update on what is and what has been happening at the old Red Cliff radar station facility.
-- Courtesy Pete Locke. Submitted in May 1998.