Living below the radar.

Perhaps, because of its ulu remote location, most people would not have heard of or knew where Princess Elizabeth Estate was. Even when taking a taxi in those days, you had to say 'Tien Tor Long' i.e. 'the Eveready battery factory', before there's some semblance of familiarity. Saying Hillview or Princess Elizabeth would simply draw a blank look. It was as though we residents of the estate were living below everyone's radar.

But then, we really WERE living below the radar!  The RAF Radar Station at Bukit Gombak.




Sometime around 1963, the Royal Air Force (RAF) built an early-warning radar installation at the summit of Bukit Gombak. It comprised the Type 80 EW Ground-Controlled Interception radar and two Height Finding Radars.

An RAF Westland Wessex helicopter.
(Photo©steve ryle Air-Britain Photo image collection)

From our flats at the base of Bukit Gombak, most residents could see the radar installation. The Early-Warning radar would be constantly rotating, while the two Height Finders would be tilting up and down, earning it the nickname the nodding radars.

Very frequently, we would also hear a loud whirring sound and the sight of a yellow RAF helicopter coming in to land at the summit.




During World War 2, there were no particular records of any battles on Bukit Gombak itself but it is known that during the Japanese Occupation, a Japanese Army camp and an Observation Post (OP) were built on the summit. It would command the entire view of Bukit Timah Road from Bukit Timah Village all the way to Mandai.

Bukit Gombak in 1960 before the installation of the RAF radars.

Picture of RAF Radar Station taken around 1965.

Height Finder Radar on Bt Gombak
Photo source: NAS

By 1963, the RAF had completed building the radar station comprising the rotating early-warning radar and one nodding height finder radar. A second height finder radar was added to the installation a few years later.  The two nodding radars faced opposite directions.


The radar station was called RAF Gombak. The base was protected by double chain-link fences. It occupied only the top around the summit and was surrounded by small farms!

Most young boys residing at Princess Elizabeth Estate would have climbed Bukit Gombak to the summit as part of their adventures or simply to view the radar installation.

I can remember my own trips to the summit, walking outside the chain-link fence and along the way would stop to pluck the starfruits, buah kelondong, rambutans and sugar cane that grew on the slope. They probably belonged to the farmers!

The radar installation was handed over to the Singapore Air Defence Command, precursor of the RSAF, when the British forces pulled out of Singapore in 1971.
Today, practically the entire Bukit Gombak hill has been taken over by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) with several military camps built within the fenced protected zone that stretches all the way from Hillview to Bukit Panjang.

Nowadays, if you look carefully at Bukit Gombak, you might still see something there in place of the old British radar. What are those, you ask? Well, I am not going to risk a knock on my door at 2 am for revealing state secrets, ha ha. Take a trip on the MRT train towards Chua Chu Kang Station and keep your eyes peeled if you want to know.

What are those things on the summit today? I don't know and don't ask me! I prefer to remain under the radar.

WW2 relics on Bukit Gombak

As a young schoolboy, I spent many hours exploring the hillside of Bukit Gombak.
Occasionally with my schoolmates but most of the time it was with a boy named Cheng Ah Bah.
Ah Bah was the son of my family washerwoman (that's right! no washing machine in my time!)
Although he was just a few years older than me, the strange thing to me then, was that Ah Bah didn't go to school as we did.  Ah Bah worked on his family farm up on the slope of Bukit Gombak.

Ah Bah would take me all around the Gombak hillside, to the different chicken and pig farms and showed me which fruit trees belonged to which farming family in that area. There were lots of durian, langsat, starfruit, sugarcane and rambutan tree plantations on the hill.

Bukit Gombak in the 1960s. Homestead farms were located all around the ridge.
This is the frontage as seen along Upper Bukit Timah Road
The Cheng family farm was located somewhere near the middle of the left ridgeline.

There was a structure near the summit that had a special significance, although at that time, it was nothing more than just a playground for me. This was a small concrete bunker-like building, which my estate friend Johar Anuar and his buddies used to called the "Fortress".  Most of the old kampong boys knew about it but it was not very accessible as the 'jungle' had grown around it.

In hindsight, I now know that this was the old World War 2 Japanese pillbox built during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. It was still there in the 1960s when the British forces built RAF Gombak Radar Station on the hilltop. This pillbox was near the source of the spring water that till today flows down Gombak towards Hillview.

This is the view of Bukit Gombak from the Jurong side towards Bukit Timah Hill.

This is a view of the summit where RAF Gombak Radar Station was sited. You can see the double security fence surrounding it. I can distinctly remember till this day trekking along the fence.

The bunker would be somewhere near the spot marked 'X" which was beside the source of the natural spring. Princess Elizabeth Estate was built right below this hill slope (right).
This old bunker and the spring source are today within the secured boundary of Mindef and there is absolutely no access anymore for ordinary folks like us.

This reminiscing of Bukit Gombak came about as I recalled how my grandfather had told me, long long ago, that during the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945), the Japanese Army had built a camp on Bukit Gombak.
This triggered my memory of Cheng Ah Bah, who once told me that there were more bunkers around Gombak Hill similar to the one we had played at.

Then it struck me like a light bulb going off ! My Eureka moment!

A while back, I had blogged about the hidden lake of Bukit Gombak.
When I was writing that, I recalled my blogger friend, Andrew Him, with his friends who formed a group called One North Explorers, had visited the lake previously a few years ago and found a destroyed concrete structure near the lake.

Was that concrete structure they stumbled upon one of the old Japanese pillbox?
This was highly possible.

Photo courtesy of Andrew Him from One North Explorers. (http://www.sgurbex.blogspot.sg)

At that time, Andrew and his friends were not able to positively identify the abandoned structure.
In the RAF Gombak photo above, the structure would be located just outside the bottom right corner, near where the hidden lake is today.

This will be my next quest. To find and try to see if that structure could be one of those WW2 Japanese pillboxes that were built around Bukit Gombak during the war years.
I will wait till the dry season around next February or March to make this expedition.
I hope to gather some like-minded friends willing to explore with me. Anyone? Drop me a comment with your email contact.


Related links:
Exploring Bukit Gombak
Bukit Gombak Hill
Topographic Map of Bukit Gombak
War Relic at Hillview Avenue
The hidden lake at Bukit Gombak

Bukit Gombak Hill

Princess Elizabeth Estate was built on the slopes of Bukit Gombak.
Bukit Gombak is the second highest hill in Singapore at 139m (437 feet) and used to house the British Royal Air Force radar station in the 1950s & 1960s.

Today, almost the entire ridge of Bukit Gombak, from Choa Chu Kang to Hillview, has been fenced off as a restricted military zone. In fact, Bukit Gombak is the location of the Ministry of Defence in Singapore and therefore one of the most secured areas here.

However, when the RAF were based at Gombak, they only occupied the summit and the hillsides around Gombak were squattered by hundreds of kampong houses all round.
The main areas for squatters and their kampongs were at Bukit Panjang beside the KTM railway tracks, around Chua Chu Kang Road near the British Army BOD (British Ordnance Depot), and at Jalan Perang which ran around Bukit Gombak on the Choa Chu Kang/Jurong side.

Closer to Princess Elizabeth Estate, the entire Chinese kampong that was at  Lorong Taluki and Lorong Seburut were also built at the base of Gombak.

Here is a montage sketch of the Bukit Gombak ridge. I think there's TMI (too much info!) in it but I think you get the idea. (click on the sketch if you really want to see a detailed view)

There were 3 major quarries on the western side of Gombak ridge along the old Jalan Perang. Only the smallest today is conserved as the Little Guilin Park.

When Singapore took over from the British and converted Gombak into a military zone, all the kampongs and squatters around Gombak were resettled.

The demolition of the kampongs and squatter housing around Bukit Gombak.

The above 3 photos are taken from PICAS, the Heritage Board photo archive.

My blogger friend Lam Chun See had just posted a series of 12 photographs in his blog he received from his British friend who was based in Singapore in the1960s. I am prompted by his posting of the photos to write this post.

Photo from Lam Chun See's blog Good Morning Yesterday.
Taken from the top of Bukit Gombak, it shows the Dairy Farm Quarry (right)
with the Union Carbide factory at Hillview (white building).
The large green patch (left centre) beside the quarry is the old Dairy Farm meadow.

I recommend you visit Chun See's blog to see alll the pictures of Gombak ridge, read his comments and those from his readers about Bukit Gombak. His blog is at this link  click here.

Related link: Exploring Bukit Gombak