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THREAD/Today, I thought we'd take a virtual tour of what is marketed as "The Battle of Britain Bunker" but more correctly known as the 11 Group Operations Room at RAF Uxbridge. In normal times, it is open to the public and one of a group of enthusiastic volunteer guides will..
take you around. I was lucky enough to pay a visit in December 2017 and so today, we can take a virtual walk around this fascinating place. If using public transport, you'll need to take the Met. Line to Uxbridge and from there, it is about a 10 minute walk. The first thing that
I noticed when walking along the tree-lined road was that many of the trees still show their wartime blackout paint, no doubt originally painted in 1939 on the imposition of the blackout, although possibly repainted subsequently. We then see the entrance to the facility, with two
"gate guardians" in the form of a Hurricane and a Spitfire. These are now replicas, the originals having been removed some years ago. The Hurricane is in Polish 303 Squadron markings, along with a Spitfire Mk IX in "Invasion Stripes" to mark the two pinnacles in the history of..
the Ops Room - the Battle of Britain and the D-Day air operations, which were controlled from here. We also see a memorial to those who served in 11 Group during the Second World War, which also points out that the Operations Room is below our feet at this spot. I quickly met my
guide for the day, Bob and we began our tour. He explained that the original Ops Room was located within nearby Hillingdon House on the formation of Fighter Command in 1936 but it was soon realised that a more secure facility would be required with the coming of war and so the
well-known construction company Sir Robert McAlpine was commissioned to build the underground bunker under conditions of strict secrecy between February and August 1939. It was completed in the nick of time for the declaration of war in September and as can be seen from the photo
the entrance is quite an unassuming affair. It is reached by descending 87 steps and is 60 feet below the ground. This was thought to be impervious to bombs at the time and as well as being bomb-proof, the facility was also designed with poison gas in mind and contains a gas..
filtration system (which still functions) which ensures that breathable air is still available to those working down below. As can be imagined, security was tight and entry was gained by pass only at the checkpoint, a reconstruction of which can be seen today, with a mannequin on
guard and a rack of Lee Enfield rifles. It was here that the Ops Room suffered its only fatal casualty in WW2, when a WRAF was killed by a rifle which was fired accidentally when it was being cleaned by the guard. A further flight of steps was then tackled and we were at last at
the bottom. Flooding has always been a problem here, although when the room was constantly manned, this could be kept under control by pumps but as Bob explained, it is more of a problem and he showed us the flood level marked on a doorframe, the result of a summer thunderstorm
in July 2015 which left the complex shoulder deep in water. Having reached the Ops Room proper, although I had never visited before, it all looked strangely familiar, no doubt because of watching the Battle of Britain film on numerous occasions and I had always thought that the
film had been shot here. This was not the case, because at the time the Ops Room was not in its current 1940 configuration at the time the movie was shot in 1968. What actually happened was that members of the production team visited RAF Uxbridge and took copious measurements and
aided by contemporary photographs, were able to reconstruct an accurate replica at Pinewood Studios. The Ops Room is dominated on one side by the huge "Tote Board" and the glass gallery which contained the Duty Controller and during the Battle of Britain, the AOC, Sir Keith Park.
The names displayed across the top and bottom of the board-TANGMERE, NORTH WEALD, HORNHCURCH, KENLEY, BIGGIN HILL, DEBDEN & NORTHOLT-are the sector stations for 11 Group. The numbers displayed beneath each name are the squadrons assigned to the relevant sector, so under Northolt
for example we can see 1 (Canadian), 303 (Polish), 229, 504 and 264 'B' flight, a night fighter unit, which is correctly shown as 'released' at this point on the day being reconstructed, 11:30 on Sunday 15 September 1940. The descriptions beneath each squadron show the readiness
status of each squadron at this time. The coloured lights on the board equate to the same colours on the clock face, so with the clock at 11:30 with the minute hand just moving out of the "blue" section of the clock, the controllers in the gallery know that if the status for
a particular squadron is lit in blue, then they can tell at a glance that it is up to date information, less than 5 minutes old. If in yellow, 10 minutes, red 15 and so on, with the lights being lit in sequence. The information shown at the bottom of the Tote Board represents the
"State of Squadrons", so we can see that "P" represents Pilots and "A" Aircraft, so we can see for example that at this precise moment, 1 (Canadian) Squadron had 23 pilots but only 13 aircraft, 303 Polish 21 pilots and 17 aircraft and so on across the squadrons of the group.
Nothing was left to chance and weather/visibility across the group was shown for all of the 11 Group airfields. The green disk denoted an "open" airfield, red was "closed" and red/green meant "usable with care", presumably as a result of enemy action. The height of the balloon
barrage is also shown at Dover and Tilbury, as can be seen in the previous photo, with other balloon locations marked further along out of shot. If we move down to the Plot Table, we can see that once again, it is set with the state of play for 11:30 on Sunday 15 December 1940,
Again, the colours corresponding with those on the clock face are used, with the three distinct raids being plotted across the Channel, showing "H" for Hostile, the "04" for example meaning that it was the fourth such raid to be plotted, the "30" indicating the estimated number
number of aircraft in the raid, so we can see that there are 100+ hostiles approaching the English coast. In response, we can see Fighter Command squadrons being deployed. Closest to interception, we can see 92 & 72 Squadrons, consisting of 20 aircraft, patrolling at 25,000 feet
as denoted by the blue "25" on the wooden block. Right at the back of the plot, we can see a block with a "W", which represents the Duxford Wing, being called down as reinforcement from neighbouring 12 Group. All this information was constantly being updated by the WRAF plotters
based on information being received from the radar plots, the Observer Corps and the squadrons themselves. There was also an inbuilt redundancy in the system so that if Uxbridge was put out of action for any reason, then the plot and tote board system was duplicated at each of
the sector stations. The restored Ops Room is largely the creation of Warrant Officer "Chris" Wren MBE, who was stationed at RAF Uxbridge for the final nine years of his RAF service and took on the task of restoring things to their Battle of Britain configuration and it is him
we have to thank for the Ops Rooms existence today. During the restoration, the original 1940 map used on the Plot table was found rolled up in a storeroom gathering dust in the mid-1980s, when it could so easily have been disposed of without anyone knowing its true historical
value. At the time of my visit, the gallery area was a shown in its 1940 configuration but also with a large collection of memorabilia on display including a baby's gas mask and the original air raid siren taken from Hillingdon House. Since my visit, a purpose-built visitor..
centre and museum has been built and it is possible that some of this memorabilia has been moved here. One of the mannequins on display did bear a striking resemblance to Susannah York in her "Battle of Britain" role, although maybe this was just my vivid imagination!
Also on display was the miniature prototype of the full-sized monument at Capel-Le-Ferne, as well as an original name plate from the Battle of Britain Class steam locomotive "Royal Observer Corps", although the original locomotive has long since been scrapped. As we climbed back
to the surface, we were reminded by Bob that it wasn't just events from the Battle of Britain that were controlled from here but of course, all of 11 Group's operations, culminating in the events of 6 June 1944 and after, when the entire Allied air operation on D-Day was
controlled from this point. As I left the site, I was able to spot the entrance to an air raid shelter, as well as one of the emergency exits to the bunker, both of which are now well covered with grass with the occasional pieces of concrete to give away the location. When we are
eventually able to return to some sort of normality, I intend to pay another visit and if you haven't already done so, I'd thoroughly recommend it. I did write about my visit in more detail on my blog, so if you'd like some more information, the link can be found on the next page
