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Research Suggests How British Hid ‘Nationally Significant’ WWII Bunker From Nazis

Battle of Britain Bunker, Uxbridge

Wikimedia Commons/Public/Battle of Britain Bunker, Uxbridge by Andrew Curtis, CC BY-SA 2.0

Ilan Hulkower Contributor
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Researchers suggested how Britain may have managed to hide the “Battle of Britain Bunker,” an underground military command center, from the Nazis during World War 2, an Aug. 16 press release by Historic England reads.

The researchers said that “recent interpretation of historic aerial photographs suggests the bunker and its defences were camouflaged as a decorative garden” that blended into “the designed landscape of” a nearby house from the air, the press release said. (RELATED: Historians Announce Recovery Of ‘Historic’ Bronze Cannon From Shipwreck)

No above-ground photos of the top-secret bunker from during the war are known to exist, according to Historic England. Surveys of the area showed that lots “of earth and concrete were piled up to protect against direct hits from above, while defences including gun pits, brick pillboxes and barbed wire entanglements were all introduced to counter enemy attack at ground level,” according to Historic England.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill was in the bunker when he famously praised the pilots of the Royal Air Force’s fighter aircraft during the Battle of Britain, the press release reads. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” he declared on Aug. 16, 1940.

The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) assisted Historic England on this project to unearth the archeological sites secrets. “MOLA is delighted to have contributed to building a greater understanding of this nationally significant monument. By bringing the various strands of information together – archaeological evidence, documentary sources, aerial photography and historic maps – we now have a good idea of how the exterior of the bunker looked during WWII,” MOLA Project Manager Jim McKeon said, according to Historic England’s press release.

“The discovery of the multiple and layered defensives employed to keep this secret nerve centre safe tells us something of the fear of the Bunker being compromised, which could have spelled disaster for the country. I’m pleased we’re still able to add to our knowledge of this extraordinary place,” Historic England’s Sandy Kidd said.

The bunker is a tourist and education site where visitors can wander around “a series of rooms on 2 levels,” Historic England said in the press release. One of the visitor-accessible sites is the operations room, which has been preserved “exactly how it was when Sir Winston Churchill visited.”