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I hope that bunker outside Inverness you showed us has been secured again ? I'm surprised you mentioned & showed where it is. It would be a tragedy for it to get vandalized by imbeciles 🙁
The large bunker in Inverness Is this the one where a guy brought a farm house and after signing for the property was informed he had a mini city under the farm house
I was a member of the ROC until its Stand Down in 1991. I wasn't a Post Observer, I was trained to work an No2 Group (Horsham) HQ as plotter. My job was to mark the big Perspex map with China graph pencils, I was trained to write the details of each bomb burst backwards for the 'heads of sheds' to view on the other side. I never envied the job of the person who had to go outside and change the GZI paper. A really good summary of the duties of an ROC volunteer. By the way, thanks for the heads up on Mark Dalton's book, purchased! I used to have all my loose leafed training manuals, probably chucked now 😔
@@CalumRaasay No2 Group was inside an above ground building which we used to train in every week, so it was accessible. I think there was a caretaker who kept it ticking over. Remember the kit had to maintained. Those glass maps like the ones in your video were cool; side lit so the china graph lit up and we had red (ground burst) and green (air bust) mushroom stickers for the attacks. We used templates for the fallout plume and a circular slide rule to calculate whether it was ground or air burst. This was dependant on bomb power (yes, that was the expression) and altitude. Funnily enough, years later (I subsequently joined the TA) I was a CBRN instructor and I found myself on a nuclear reporting course using the same templates and circular slide rule! Sorry if I've started to ramble, the Stand Down still leaves a bad taste in mouth even though I hadn't been in for very long.
Amazing. Those maps in the Dundee one are actually hand drawn ones done by the volunteers, they’re incredible! Worth visiting if you’re ever up this way. Great comment though, appreciate it! The whole stand down thing really did sully it for a lot of members from what I’ve seen. A real shame to have ended it that way.
Started at 16 in a post in north Devon 10 group ended up in sector command 21 group Preston C/obs, ROC all volunteers and a great bunch all ages when I started my C/Obs had been a wartime bomber pilot learnt so much from that crew. Great memories.
I heard a lecture from a retired ROC member on these bunkers, and the thing I remember most strikingly was that they needed to know if their phone line was ever broken, so there was a speaker that beeped every few seconds. If the beeping ever stopped, it meant that a bomb had cut the line. He played a recording of the beeps for a few minutes, and you could see everyone in the room getting agitated and thinking that nothing less than the threat of nuclear war would persuade them sit in a room with that noise for hours.
@@Daniel-S1 Yes. The position in a bunker of the Receiver Carrier WB400A is shown just above the folding table in the diagram at 10:10 At 15:17 there is a grey WB1401 model nestled between two more grey boxes on the wall.
You may be surprised to know that the same system was fitted in the substantial basement bunker of the standard pattern fire stations built in the early 60's, and in a surface room called the "Post office telecom room in later more modern fire stations. My first post as a new recruit fireman in the late 70's (as we were called at that time) was one such station, and once every 6 months at a set time and date 1 person was posted to sit by the receiver and listen out for a test signal. Once received, the information was written on a brown postcard and sent to HQ for processing to, I suppose, a central government office. There was also an air raid siren positioned at the top of every station drill tower and not far from my house there used to be a metal tower with an air raid warning siren that was infrequently but routinely tested, and now removed as were the sirens from the fire stations following the end of the Soviet Union. I do wonder if any such plans even exist now or has it been decided that should a nuclear attack occur today it would be pointless to bother being prepared and purely academic as the potential destruction would be almost absolute and the casualty numbers being so high, the ruminants of society would eventually die of radiation poisoning. What now then, since the resurgent threat from Putins Russia? I see no signs of any preparation of warning the public other than the faulty mobile phone alert tested recently that failed to reach many across the country, and no efforts to prepare personnel for any kind of recovery or management of survivors.
@@geoffcampbell7846 However. Revised December 2022, the Swedish government has sent a booklet or brochure out to every household in Sweden entitled: If Crisis or War Comes. The English version can be down loaded free and gives advice on how to prepare etc. The Swedes have also embarked on recommissioning all the shelters that people had to have built into their homes by law but have been neglected since the fall of the Soviet Union.
My mother was a member of the ROC back in the day and spent many hours inside one of them up here in Orkney. Apparently after being locked in there for a full 24 hours as part of an exercise, there wasn't enough oxygen left in the air to sustain a match when one of the folk tried to light a cigarette at the end....
Interesting how bunkers in movies always look more expensive than the real ones Room in a real bunker: Looks like a room Room in movie bunker: pipes everywhere, riveted walls, dramatic shadows, panels with blinking lights
The old 11 Group/Fighter Command bunker at Bentley Priory, before upgrade in the early 80's, was no doubt. not too dissimilar to when it was first built. I think anybody from WW2 walking in, would have found it much the same. Compared to the ROC bunkers shown here, it was the poor relation. Considering BP was HQ ROC, there wasn't much there for them in the bunker. No doubt decamping to elsewhere if the shit hit the fan. The old WW2 Bomber Command bunker at High Wycombe, if I recall, didn't have much room allocated to them either. In 1971 ish, a thermal lance was used to cut through a reinforced internal bunker wall to provide an entrance to a new room for them. E & O E.
As teenagers, me & my mate broke into... Errr... I mean repurposed 😉 one of those near Balintore on the North East coast of Scotland in the mid 90's (it literally only took 2 bent nails to lift up the latch) 😉 There's also a WW2 aerodrome there & another near Tain.! There was still bunkbeds with matresses, a toilet, air filters, a telephone, a bench & a map on the wall with the locations & numbers of all the other observation posts marked on it. It was just the coolest thing ever.! We hooked up a 12 volt car battery to a portable stereo & light bulbs & it became our little den.. We used to go up there with our girlfriends, something to drink, something to smoke & have a grand old time. 😉 😉 It wasn't until years later that I understood the true role & significance of them.!
I love it. So cool. You should watch out though. If they're sealed and have steel in there corroding, the corrosion process will consume all the oxygen. Lots of people have had their lives cut short because they enter vessels and tanks and then just drop due to lack of oxygen. You should really have a gas meter when you enter places like that.
@@patrickm.4754Brits are immune to black mould most homes in the South East have a perpetual black mould problem. Unless you're allergic to mould spore, have breathing issues or encounter an unnaturally dense patch of mould, black mould won't do much with short term exposure.
Calum contacted me a few weeks ago to use some footage I had shot while serving in the ROC at stand down and I'm glad I did as this is an informative and entertaining piece of work. I was relatively young when I served in the ROC, 15 at entry and 28 at stand down. It was serious, in so much as those Soviet missiles could reach us very quickly and we did think carefully whether we would be taken out on first strike, survive the blast or perish with the radiation. The posts could not survive a close strike but would survive a distance strike and certainly radiation. Your location (and we knew all the targets) and whether the missiles were accurate were all factors in your survival chances. Many Observers didn't think too much about the grisly business we were in but rather enjoyed the friendship of the Corps and the social life. Often it was not the Russians who were our greatest enemy but CND and the cold! It was very uncool to be in the ROC if you were young but I enjoyed the secretive nature of it all and also the Dad's Army aspect of people of many ages and backgrounds all working together. We had a pensioner who had been in the ROC since World War Two and an officer who was an ex RAF Vulcan navigator plus a gravedigger and a guy who worked in a crematorium. They always joked on how they would dispose of us all after the bomb dropped!
I would have only been 4 when the ROC was stood down but it sounds like you had a great time doing your bit and met some very interesting characters. I bet they had some stories to share. Thanks for sharing and supporting the ROC.
Great video, excellent research. My father-in-law was one of those volunteers and went down to RAF Waddington to attend the parade to be stood down by HRH.
My family is having a very crap time at the moment (sickness, hospice and all that stuff). It's been a very terrible time for the last week or so. So, when I saw a new Calum video come up I made sure to take some time off this evening to just sit and watch and learn about something interesting that I'd never heard of before. Thanks man. I really needed this. :)
Very interesting video Calum, I was in the RAF during part of the cold war and I remember the government some years earlier sending by post an information package called 'protect and survive' to every household about what to do after the nuclear attack, then joining up, carrying out nuclear training and discovering how useless that information was. Thank god it never happened.
America was fed the same "you can survive the bomb" propaganda too. Ours were mostly in short film form and volunteer training. Several years ago I found a DVD compilation of those old films e.g. Bert the Turtle, Duck and Cover etc... and to be honest, there were more than a few that contradicted each other... "it's treason to evacuate (NYC) in the event of a forthcoming attack, but vital to evacuate Portland Oregon..." Many of the films (which originally came on TV or at the movies before the main feature were funny as can be. Especially if you are blessed with a peculiar sense of humor. My late Father used to forbade us kids from watching that rubbish. He was adamant and always said that the living would envy the dead. I believe him.
I couldn't help feeling a little chill creeping up my spine when the gentleman remarked and cautioned when leaving the bunker: "Whatever it is outside, it's not peace....".
Back in the late 70’s , early 80’s used to watch a guy in Birmingham building a bunker in his garden as we passed by on the bus to school. Started with a massive hole, then concrete and then finally saw that he was lining it with metal (probably lead) before he started the block work. Think I just found it on Google maps!
I worked for the ROC in rural Aberdeenshire in the late 80's and worked in one of these bunkers, LOVED it. I remember it being damp and the sound of the generator thumping away above ground to charge the batteries. Always a bugger to start unlike a modern Honda engine, this was a Lister from memory
Excellent video and a fascinating topic. I like that you added that ‘bleak’ ending as I was watching this I thought of ‘Threads’ and how it’s not the war, it’s the aftermath. ‘Threads’ haunted my nightmares and I didn’t sleep for two days after first seeing it in the 80s. Watching the town council hole up in a bunker and then being pretty much useless after the attack and finally dying underground kept coming to mind watching about these posts and bunkers. “The only winning move is not to play.”
I enjoy historical videos about the Cold War preparations and bunkers. I'm an American and over here we didn't have anything like your ROC mini bunkers. Our Civil Defense Corps had observers detailed to rooftops. What America did have was a myriad of Command Bunkers of varying sizes and capabilites throughout the U.S. The one I'm most familiar with was right in the area of New Orleans where I was born, and I saw the outside of it every day. One day long after we'd moved, we were back in the old neighborhood and being a member of the Civil Defense in my current County, I stopped in and was given the full ten penny tour. To begin with, the New Orleans Civil Defense bunker was staffed 24/7/365 from the late 1950s until the early 1990s when it was closed. It was staffed by a representative of the Police, Fire, Civil Defense, Mayors Office, Air National Guard, and the Army National Guard. It began 3 stories down, and went down for 2 more. It was completely circular in design. It's purpose was to be a command and control setting for city operations in the event of war/attack. It had a staff auditorium (or bull pen), a mini TV & radio station, mini emergency room, dental clinic, kitchen, sleeping quarters for 200 (men & women separately). A radioactive fallout decontamination station, an armory, and several "escape" tunnels. Its gone now... it was flooded during Hurricane Katrina. It was eventually filled in and pricey condominiums built over it. Unless you knew it was there, there's no trace. You can still find a few news articles and old black and white photos online. The New Orleans Civil Defense Bunker on West End - Pontchartrain Drive.
If you haven't already been; there's a bunker in fife called the "Secret Bunker" and it's a very good example of a cold war bunker. It's a bit out of the way to get there but it's massive. Just the ramp that takes you down to the bunkers level is quite impressive.
I live relatively near it ,been in it once, really interesting place, I was told that when it was being built the lorry drivers stopped at bottom of road and got out then a soldier would take the lorry in and empty it then return it to the driver
There's a huge 2000sqm ex-soviet one in Līgatne, Latvia quite similar to the sector HQ you showed. It was hidden under a former Spa (now a rehab centre) and only declassified in the 2000s. It's in pristine condition as it was only actually used once during a wargame, you can visit it and take a tour, of the rooms, and they even let you press all the buttons etc, and on weekends you can even enjoy some traditional soviet cuisine in it's functioning period correct canteen.
Coming from one of those kids who were taught to "duck and cover" in the early seventies, It's hard to believe that we're still under the threat of nuclear war.
The tech college I went to gave us all lectures on iodine pills and what the sirens meant from Plymouth Dockyard. When at Torpoint secondary we also got told if we had 3 siren blasts the teachers would tell us what to do and we were to be given the iodine pills.
Always a treat to see one of your videos appearing, another excellent wonderfully researched edited and presented vid. Your efforts to capture these pieces of history are wonderful!
14:03 Great informative video, Calum. During the early 1980s before I joined the RAF I was in the ROC (25 Group/Barrhead Post). During an exercise period our post had to man Skelmorlie Post for 12 hours due to personnel shortages. I didn't even get to see the sea due to the thick fog! Happy memories of a dedicated group of volunteers. Great to see Skelmorlie Post maintained.
Thank you for researching and publishing this interesting and accurate account of the ROC and UKWMO. I was a Post Observer in No2 Group Horsham from 1988 to 1991. I well remember going up and down that ladder during exercises - you only needed to hit the hatch counter-weight once - after that you remembered it!
There's one in the wheat field opposite my Dad's house. The farmers painted it in "Calass green" so from a distance the superstructure looked like another pice of farm machinery.
We have one of the Regional War Rooms just down the road from here in Nottingham, and i would love to see it restored. It is grade 2 listed, but the local developers would love nothing more than to see it removed as new housing has been built up to it.
Gosh, we had LAN parties in Kelvedon Hatch in the early 2000 when lugging around a beige box and a CRT still seemed like a good idea. The H&S upgrades to make the space OK are hilarious.
No idea if that was the original name but that's what the place is called now. It's a (much larger) bunker which housed a phone exchange among other things and is open to the public.
Another fascinating video. I've visited the ROC bunker in York a few years ago which was a larger regional HQ. One thing I found shocking was that the guys going outside to remove the photo paper were not provided with proper NBC gear, only boiler suits.
@@CalumRaasay That sounds very likely, make use of the old surplus kit. To be honest you wouldn't want to use a WW2 respirator anyway as the filters contained asbestos but you would have thought that later the Avon respiratory and NBC clothing used by the armed forces could have been made available.
We recently visited the bunker in Broadway next to Broadway Tower, still in its original condition and tours with guided volunteers. It is worth a visit if you are passing.
Really enjoyed the video. I run the replacement network. It didn't actually disappear, it was just replaced by a fully digital system in '92 and currently being replaced again.
Seeing that film of the maroons going off brings back some memories!! When I left school in '86 my first job was at a company called P.W. Control Systems who had a contract from Pains Wessex to make those very maroon launching systems for the ROC.
I've been in these bunkers when they were operational during the 1980s. I was a Chief Observer. Living conditions if we had gone to war wouldn't have been great. And personally I'm not convinced that we would have been at all effective.
Here in Finland we have cold war bunkers all over the place. Every apartment building used to have one and the hospital I work for has one that they use as changing room for us workers. I know there were people who were taught how to use the doors and ventilation.
I was with 9 group Yeovil Somerset I was there for 7years my job was then to help in the telephone exchange and radio backup I sometimes was on post comm's . we could have 50 or so people on an exercise at any one time.
Great video about something I didn´t even know existed: a relic of the past but, sadly, also a stark reminder of the latent dangers of the present. Glad to see you had the rare chance of being a sort of cold war Howard Carter.
Back in the day it was 'be prepared', sadly today I'm not sure we are prepared for anything. If you look for them you can spot all manner of cold war assets all over the uk, it is history that needs to be remembered. Another great story Calum.
Good video and a subject well covered, we all love an ROC post, you might be surprise how many are in good condition with plenty of bits and bobs inside.
The odd part of the original plan was linking the non-master ROC posts by GPO telephone lines, often carried on traditional pole routes for part of their journey. So the bomb would fall on the nearest town centre, the observers would take their readings from within their concrete bunker and then... discover the telephone exchange in the town had just been vaporized.
Thanks Calum for your indepth review. We had one of these bunkers outside the villages of Augher and Clogher in the townland of Knockmanny County Tyrone, back in my younger day. Always strange to see cars in the middle of nowhere one evening per week, but I was told by my parents that it was ROC. Sadley all is gone, the whole area was excavated for building sand materials. Best wishes from Northern Ireland.
How did the communication between the individual small posts and the command bunker work back then? Were there special dedicated telephone lines laid underground just for these posts? I mean, the public telephone network, usually hanging from telephone poles, would have been vaporized and blown away during an attack.
We recently visited the York regional ROC HQ Cold War Bunker. A very interesting tour and history of these facilities and the network of smaller posts. I have located my nearest bunker in Eastchurch but unfortunately not accessible as it’s now on private land. Well done for an excellent video….ever considered visiting the ‘Red Sand Towers’ in the Thames Estuary??
I was a member of the ROC at 10 post Winchester group (Devizes). It was a great time as the social side was at the ta club for the weekly meetings. The exercises usually done on shifts between all members meant eating ration packs one minute and clearing off home for pie and chips 😆 The posts were small, but you were busy so you didn't notice it that much. As the 3 man crew meant one person slept on the bunk bed in rotation. I spent most time outside smoking and listening to my walkman 😆 I still have my uniform and training folders. Although it ran on batteries, we had a generator up top. Usually stored in the john. We all got free entry to airshows as a bonus. And as a teenager it was fun and we got paid (a pittance) but it was just random folks who liked to sit around underground I guess, a bit like a womble 😆😆😆🇬🇧
These are remarkably difficult jobs. From what radiation can do to what consistent enclosure can do, the stress is constant and intense. Those people would have been under a lot of stress and must forget themselves to prevent the total failure of humanity as we, or they, knew it. Crazy.
There is rumour that the Post by the A5 in the midlands was not decommissioned as the guy had the wrong keys and never came back. A new industrial estate has been built around or over it, so it may still be fully intact. It’s just a rumour and I’ve propagated it…
Thank you Calum, I was thoroughly engrossed and entertained by your interesting take on this almost unheard of collaborative war time infrastructure. I knew of their existence as with many older people, me having lived as a child just off the back of a disused military aerodrome, where an identical well-concealed listening post was in the middle of nearby woods. Sadly that too on my last visit in 2004, was also completely flooded and in a very poor state of disrepair. I never knew though just how many were dotted all around. Shame these pillagers and vandals have zero respect for our amazing resilience, showing no common decency to preserve such a brave voluntary wartime effort. Keep up the great work. It's much appreciated. 👍
There's a brilliantly preserved command monitoring bunker in Broadway in the Cotswold. My girlfriend and I went to visit it last year and it's really interesting!
Great video. The secrecy around theses was amazing, not many of the general public knew much if anything about them. I remember a friend telling me about the network before 1990 and I was surprised, I did not have a clue, he also said about the what he called the UK Civil defence force and a bit about the collapse of the funding. Apparently it still goes on but under a different name.
How nice of them. In recognition of the valuable service of the Observer Corps, they will now be known as the Royal Observer Corps. We won't pay you but you will sound a little more distinguished than before.
I know of one of these observation posts not too far from me, for years I thought it was an air quality monitoring station (until I learned otherwise). This was a great video, seeing inside the HQ was a treat too, they’ve done a fantastic job bringing it back to life.
I'm from the US, our shelters were in the basements of large community buildings. The laughable(now) instructions were for students to hide under their desks. In the central states those same instructions were continued to be propagated for Tornado or even Earthquake drills. There was even booming sales of home fallout shelters you could bury in the yard...most houses didn't have basements. They were later repurposed for tornado use too.
These "laughable" instructions as you call them were based on carefully collected data gathered from the aftermath of the atomic strikes in Japan in WWII. Most lethal injuries outside of the immediate blast zone (where no one was expected to survive) were caused by flying glass. The "duck and cover" instructions were meant to save lives many MILES away from the blast, not those directly hit. It wasn't laughable at all and is greatly misunderstood these days.
This was nostalgia inducing and heartwarming. When Great Britain used to mean something. And now, look where we are as Europeans. The cold war never ended, just briefly paused.
The toilets you mention were commonly called Elsan toilets after the largest manufacturer. They were used all over the place where there was no water supply including some military aircraft, camping, caravan and building sites and temporary public gatherings like air displays. The outer housing contained an inner bucket, both steel with a conventional toilet seat and lid. A strong fragranced oily disinfectant fluid was placed in the bottom of the empty toilet which filled with solid and liquid waste and toilet paper up to the emptying level. Not a pretty sight but better than digging a hole in the ground! The modern porta potty system works in a similar way and is still in use today in touring caravans etc.
There is one of these ROC bunkers just across the road from me. It is all overgrown with Whin and Broom. You wouldn’t know it was there and I think it’s still locked.
I used to walk past one of these as a kid and I would always say to my parents without a shred of evidence "I reckon that's a nuclear bunker". So pleased when I found out I was right.
I'm absolutely fascinated by this moment in time & other moments around that era. Whatever we did, we did it with our full focus and dedication. I admire that & i wish we could still have something like that to this very day.. Looking at the cold war now is oddly strange because we are currently experiencing more activity and atrocities by Russia than at any moment during the Cold War.. I hope we start taking this situation more seriously and I hope European countries also take it more seriously.. The main point is Russia should not be able to feel like they can get away with this terrible behavior. Invading Ukraine & committing war crimes against Ukrainian civilians and civilian locations for 2+ yrs now.. I really wish countries would get behind Ukraine and make it clear this is utterly unacceptable from Russia.. Just thinking about the cold war I can't help but think about what's currently going on..
In the early 1980's, I was introduced to these bunkers while I was an Air Cadet. It was interesting to me at the time, that the UK had bothered to use these bunkers and still had the foresight to continue them to be manned. These places and people, were decimated by short sighted politicians, with only their budgets in mind to please ignorant leaders. The world continues to be a dangerous place, but this has been lost to leaders more interested in furnishing their own wants.. Even now, war rages in Europe with no response from blind government's. The history of warfare shows, that our enemies are never far away and in different guises will raise their ugly heads again. Regarding the analogue way of doing things, there are two ways of looking at this method. One: computers were in their infancy and were unreliable. Two: an analogue system was not susceptible to nuclear EMP's. Electric - Magnetic - Pulse, which fries modern transistors. Technology, has become fragile to all types of attacks, even today with GPS being disrupted over Ukraine being a clear indication, that we rely on to much digital technology, while forgetting the old skills. One does hope war is not inevitable, but removing the coup was a mistake and in a time of need, could not be replaced. It can be difficult for youngsters to understand the past, but through teaching and demonstration of the past, be it physical items or discussion by mouth, it is hoped our younger generation will learn from past and future mistakes. But also retain skills and knowhow so often lost.
My parents were part of this. I remember visiting one as a kid. I remember it being explained that this was to observe the nuclear attacks on Dunoon US sub base and Glasgow area. As we were only 30miles SW. I've just looked it up on Subritanica and it appears flooded to within 3ft of the roof.
There's a few of these ROC posts in the Chilterns which I've visited, always found them intriguing. One had Christmas cards inside from other ROC posts and one had been clearly lived in for a period of time.
I'm assuming there is a fairly large invite list from the 10 or so current ones i have found in our region that appear to be being actively maintained. Pretty sure I'm not invited either....haha
I worked on the telephone lines to these ROC bunkers. There were many inconsistencies. The bunker had to have an underground feed so it didn’t get blown away. Lots had the underground feed only for it to go overhead once it was back at the road ! The distribution equipment was in a very robust steel box in the telephone exchange where the wires emerged from the box it was often in a wooden hut for rural exchanges ! Every few years we would be given a mountain of dry cells (Batteries) and have the job of replacing them at all the sites. They were the ultimate backup power in-case the exchange battery died in the blast. The national broadcast circuit used the speaking clock circuit which could be switched over to the WB400 network. In the bunker were two telecom items, a WB400 which was a broadcast receiver to get messages from the central government / police and a Teletalker for two way communication with the HQ / Other ROC posts (Master) ? The WB400 should always work but the Teletalker had to be switched / patched in the local exchange. We normally went in pairs to these ROC sites, only one went down the hole the other remained top side and could go for help if required. We never seemed to test for gas it was always assumed the ventilation was OK.
Fascinating, as always! I'm reminded of all the decommissioned Nike missile bases scattered around the world. Built to a very consistent plan, many blend into fairly urban settings since they were often intended to defend cities against nuclear strikes. Neighbors have no idea that the live next to a former underground nuclear missile base (yes, the later Ajax missiles used nuclear warheads to defend against nuclear strikes, strange as that may seem). I have visited several, one abandoned and two repurposed as firefighting helicopter bases. There's plenty of material there for a video Calum, should you ever run short!
I was going down one of my regular nightly rabbit holes off the ferry and wasn't expecting one of the ex crew to be commentating to me lol. A very well done video Calum, I hoped you're still doing the mad drawings aswell? Cheers kai.
There's a good one in York you can visit, York Cold War Bunker. There's also one of the monitoring posts in my village, it's had a for sale sign outside it for as long as I can remember
A12 between Witham and Hatfield Peveral, the central reservation had a gap in it. This was filled in the during the early 90's but at the time, even I as a kid, could never understand why such a dangerous road feature existed - the number of cars attempting U-turns on a busy trunk road!!! Then in 2000, I understood why: It was a turn-off, into a field, north side, featuring one of these bunkers. I only found this out after accidentally stumbling across the _'Subterranean Britannica'_ website one night in my University days. There's also one in Wickham Bishops, now converted to a fibre optic junction for BT. The A12 bunker is fully extant and pretty much vandalised and flooded.
28:21 ... We see punched paper tape, a digital madium. I agree that the most of the input was analog, but you also could have pointed out this exception, especially for those who might not be clear about the difference. Great doc!
I used to sometimes go with my father who was in the ROC to do his checks on out local bunker in Suffolk, which was one of the areas that was shut down in the 1960s.
36:09 The torch that can be seen is a classic angled head TL122, it had been around since the 1940's I believe and saw service into the late 80's at least, it had a slider on/off switch to the side, along with a momentary switch little dimple above the main switch, for both temporary flashes of light as well as signalling purposes, to the rear it had a metal clip for attaching to the uniform. In rare form it had a red lens that replaced the clear on which was usually issued. The torch was a more or less direct copy of the American issue one, both variants used two D type cells. It's been a while since I've seen one but recognised it immediately.
Awesome video Calum, we had one just beside our village in Aberdeenshire and when I saw your video thumbnail I recognised the entry hatch etc and knew that’s what it must have been! We would sledge on the hill beside it. Also remember it getting filled in unfortunately, I guess due to its close proximity to our village! Thanks for finally educating me on its history!👍🏻👌🏻
The idea of triangulating the actual impact sites by the visual flash is both macabre and fascinating. Shades of the V-Bomber crews and their anti-flash eyepatches.
Imagine being the guy that has to go outside after potentially dozens of huge nukes have gone off around you to collect the photo paper only to skurry back inside to report the findings before your position is overrun with hundred-RAD plus fallout.
