Port HHZ was a

shore establishment A stone frigate is a naval establishment on land. "Stone frigate" is an informal term that has its origin in Britain's Royal Navy after its use of Diamond Rock, an island off Martinique, as a 'sloop of war' to harass the First French Empire, ...

of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

during the Second World War. It was based at

Loch Cairnbawn ''Loch'' () is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch. In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicised spelling ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

, and was established in 1942. The base was heavily involved in the training for the

X-Craft The X class was a World War II midget submarine class built for the Royal Navy during 1943–44. It was substantially larger than the original Chariot manned torpedo. Known individually as X-Craft, the vessels were designed to be towed to thei ...

operations (

Operation Source Operation Source was a series of attacks to neutralise the heavy German warships – ''Tirpitz'', ''Scharnhorst'' and ''Lützow'' – based in northern Norway, using X-class midget submarines. The attacks took place in September 1943 at Kaaf ...

) to sink the

German battleship Tirpitz ''Tirpitz'' was the second of two s built for Nazi Germany's ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) prior to and during the Second World War. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the architect of the ''Kaiserliche Marine'' (Imperial Navy), the ship ...

. From July 1943, the craft worked up from at Port HHZ. Capital ships of the Home fleet acted as target ships at Port HHZ. The Boom Defence organisation were also heavily involved in surrounding these ships with nets and providing net defences and equipment for the trials. sailed for and arrived at Port HHZ on 30 August 1943 to act as depot ship to the submarines taking part, and the submarines , , , , and arrived between 31 August and 1 September. Special security measures at Port HHZ were also increased from 1 September. No leave was allowed, and only specially selected officers and ratings were permitted to leave the area. All ships present were retained in the port until the completion of the operation.

References

{{Royal Navy shore establishments Royal Navy bases in Scotland Royal Navy shore establishments