They were driven off by a detachment of the 23rd Sikh Pioneers garrisoned on the island under the command of Captain A.G.C. Hutchinson. The troops on the mainland facing the island were subsequently pushed back by troops from Aden supported by the Royal Navy and by the end of the year all threat to the island of Perim had been removed. In 1964 Perim took on a new role, it became the base for the British Middle East Relay Station. This was built by the British Diplomatic Wireless Service to be a relay station for the World Service of the BBC. The station had been previously based in Somalia and called the East Africa Relay Station but was closed after a disagreement between the new Somali and the British Governments. The same transmitters were used in both stations and were sent back to the DWS main technical base https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspidistra_(transmitter) at Crowborough in the UK for a thorough service prior to being set up again on Perim. The base was built from scratch with new large diesel fuel storage tanks being situated in the port area and a supply pipeline installed to serve the Deltic generators at the transmitter site. 20 prefabricated Houses were built on the western side of the island next to the transmitter site for the engineers and their families. In addition two small barrack blocks provide accommodation for the platoon of Aden based Soldiers that were on a two week ‘RnR rotation’ to provide security. The foundations for all these buildings are still visible on Google Earth. The station was resupplied by three Aden Airways Dakota flights each week, as there were no shops on the Island these delivered food supplies from the NAAFI in Aden and took engineers and their families to and from Aden on resupply trips. The Army platoon was flown in and out on a combination of Blackburn Beverly, Scottish Aviation Twin Pioneer and De Havilland Beaver flights. The station started regular broadcasting in early 1965 on 701kHz, the same frequency that had been earlier used in Somalia. Power was likely around 100 kW and was capable of being heard in Australia and New Zealand in the early morning. A disastrous fire broke out in late summer 1965 when one of the main Deltic generators threw a rod. The resulting fire prevented enough power being produced to maintain the broadcast service. While options