Inside DM Kineton: Western Europe’s LARGEST Ammunition Depot | Forces TV 

Nothing says British army more than someone wearing both a hi vis jacket and camouflage at the same time!

Served there between 1955 and 1959. Some very interesting programmes. Had the privilege of checking 12 shells from the former HMS Hood.

Seems like a big risk to keep the majority of your munitions in one location

"so this one is defineately inert?" yeah but just dont look behind you or infront of you in any direction to the live ammunitions

Many years I used to live near Kineton. There was a very ordinary-looking country road along one boundary of this site. I was driving down it one day when I got a puncture. In a very short time a couple of military police jeeps arrived to find out what I was doing - when I explained they changed my tire for me, and sent me on my way.

Knowing my clumsy ass I would accidentally trip over a box and land on a shell

I've been kicked of the base for saying "who the f^%$ do you think your talking to" to the gobby head of civil contractors.... ooops! My cousin did some bomb disposal training their, to detect electronic triggered IED's. He found 4 out of 5 on the compound. His sergeant asked him to pull alongside a bin and try again. No detection was found. The sergeant got out and checked the bin because he hid the devise there. Local council had emptied the bin lol

So is anyone else thinking what I am thinking? All eggs in one basket, one hypersonic missile?

I am so glad this has been done, I have often wanted to see inside an existing/in-use munitions bunker/store. Really detailed insight which has cured my curiosities! great to see the MoD allowing access and been quite open. Great watch.

What a waste. They could just sell old explosives at military surplus stores so that civilians can have a blast during holidays.

I live like 3 miles from that, I didn’t even know this is what Kineton did 😂

There is absolutely no reason for this to be in my recommendations, but hell, now I am interested

Defence Kineton. In my day it was called Central Ordnance Depot Kineton. How times change.

I was one of 11 asked to volunteer to guard a dump in Germany for 24 hours. No one in without the proper paperwork, live rounds in weapons and a massive hill between the modern guardhouse and the rest of the dump. There was even pools to jump in because phosphorus was stored there. One major did his nut when we refused him access as he had the incorrect paperwork and we arrested some suspicious looking Germans across the road. It was when PIRA was active. During the night, I heard someone creep up to the wire. I fell over backwards cocking my SLR and fortunately didn't fire. It was a boar and I would have looked well stupid explaining that one away, although we would have eaten well first. Those were the days :) PS The Germans turned out to be picking mushrooms.

Fellas, yeah, hi. Greets from the US. Hope you're well. Do me a favor. Just take a minute and look and see if you have any .30 carbine. It's obsolete, you don't use anything that takes it any more. I know, it's not in your inventory lists most likely, but you know, just check the back room, under those old tarps. I'll take any crate you happen to find. Thanks and hugs!

Gotta love the constant ticking sound, thanks forces news!

kineton was my first uk posting when i was in my 20s im now in my 70 s but still have fond memories of c a d kineton

Lovely wildlife ponds. I never knew that they were so quick and easy to make. Alan Titchmarsh has lied to me for all these years!😡 Keep up the good work fellas. I can't wait to get back to Salisbury Plain after lock down for some wildlife watching.

God!, This takes me back, DM Kineton or CAD Kineton as it was know back in the day, was my first posting after basic training back in 1986/7. Served with some great lads and have some good memory's.

I actually help build the igloo’s in the 80s. My dad,uncle and I did 12 hour shifts there, good memories

Very interesting, I lived in Warwick years ago when the site was called CAD Kineton. Thanks for a glimpse of the history of the place.

Very interesting and thanks for sharing. I rode through the site on my Ducati a couple of weeks ago, never realised its significance. All under the shadow of Edge Hill too, scene of a few more bangs in the 17th century 😊

1:38 his name

85 grams of explosive for a 500 pound bomb? You guys are lacking using these smart bombs

It is quite amazing though that some of these munitions of such a short lifespan.

A location is best defended by infantry, preferably with blank firing rifles. The British Army have moved on from things like thinking about winning wars, to more important stuff like ensuring everyone is gender neutral and non binary!

Fascinating. I drive past the site quite often - really interesting to see inside the fence.

2:29 what a Goblin she made it through Sandhurst without being touched

After sending everything to ukraine the shed is empty and is said to take 20 years to re-stock again.

Im dancing around like Wesley snipes from demolition man when he sees all the guns . What's your bogel

Not only an active army base but also the Edgehill battlefield. They used to do escorted tours of the battlefield back in the late 60's.

The kebab van is banging too lol

Really love this channel, numerous members of my family are In the Army, I say what you been doing "nothing," they say. Great vids, thank you for this.

that's MY dad in the stills, WOW 4;09 on the left ;)

Is it wise to have to 3/4 of your entire munitions in one place? One big accident or attack and it would severely hamper the armed forces in operations.

Why blow up the out of date explosives? If they don't want it, they should auction it off, or give it to a homeless shelter. Don't waste it.

I was an AT at CAD Kineton from Jan 62 until Feb 64 and again from Dec 66 to June 69. Since then I have passed the depot on many occasions and noted its reincarnation from the original layout with well over two hundred rail served sheds (ESHs), seventy miles of rail track and virtually no roads to its current format. The original depot was split into three sub-depots, 1 & 2 to the east of the B4086, 3 to the west of that road. There was a twice daily passenger train to take staff from camp HQ to 3 Sub. Up until the late 60's the road on the south side of the depot from the B4100 (A41 in those days) to the B4086 did not exist. Originally there was a whole line of sheds on its alignment which, together with a cluster of sheds near Radway village, were demolished in the mid 60's. This was because they were too close to habitation that severely restricted how much explosive could be stored in them. In those days there were three level crossings over the B4086. These demolitions allowed the new road to be constructed to fulfil a promise made to the local population when the depot was built to reinstate a link between the two roads. Interesting to see the demolition ground at work, we had a 10lb explosive content limit for each 'blow' but we worked with each 'blow' being done in a pit. I believe they had to be a minimum of 3ft deep. For bigger blows, mainly to get rid of bulk stocks of wartime guncotton and other explosives, we used to take lorry loads down to the Salisbury Plain where we could have 80lb blows, again in pits. The dem ground had its own rail siding, there always had to be a small Wickham railcar and trailer present when we were working in case of accidents to take casualties (or the bits) away. The normal driver was old Bill from Northend village who, knowing my interest in railways, took me on explorations of rusty rail lines in the depths of 3 Sub where no 'man' had been for years! I pulled the point's levers (switches for readers in the USA) whilst he drove!. For other railway 'buffs', during my first tour at Kineton the SMJ was still open for freight and was used mainly for iron ore trains passing through. I also recall the winter of 62/ 3 at the depot, I was sub-depot AT and had to cross the depths of the depot by foot, regularly disappearing into snow hidden ditches. Using pinch bars to move wagons frozen to the tracks was another skill that we were not taught at Army Apprentice College! I did visit the depot on two occasions by rail tours in later years, this was after the depot had been reconfigured. On the second occasion the train, hauled by army locos, went round the whole depot, including '3 Sub', [all the stoves in the kitchen car had to be extinguished whilst the train was in the depot]. The funniest thing about this though was a chap who had got on the train by mistake at Banbury. He did not realise that he was on the wrong train until he was halfway round the depot, announcing to everybody that he should be at some location many miles to the north. The big problem for him was that he was due to be the best man at a wedding! Some good liaison between depot staff and MOD Police saw him taken from the train to Leamington Spa to continue his journey north. Like many comments above I cannot understand why smoke grenades only have a five-year life, at least in a temperate climate. We had perfectly serviceable twenty-year-old wartime grenades and paper cased illuminating cartridges for Verey pistols in the 60's. The same with 2" mortar smoke, although we did do a recart and retail job on tens of thousands of these. Used to find notes in the boxes from the girls working in the wartime factories to the soldiers they thought would have used them within months! The stories I could tell - can anybody remember me during my second tour as a Sgt arriving each morning on my bike from Kineton village?

Don’t they realise how low the water table is at Kineton 😂

I enjoy watching these Videos from Forces TV so much! Like this one they are almost very interesting and show in a really good way how the British Armed Forces work and do their service! Good job! Royal Armed Forces and Forces TV!! And by the way Forces TV helps me a little bit to keep my school english alive☺ Greetings from germany🇬🇧🇩🇪🇬🇧🇩🇪👍

Interesting. My father Terry Jickells used to run the demolitions wing at 22 SAS for some years. This would be right up his street. Mark

Back in January 1963 I arrived at CAD Kineton. Back then there was a farmer and his herd of cows! 1963 started with a cold spell lasting weeks, we used to make our way on foot over fields with two or three foot snow. Working in huge brick and concrete “sheds” full of what seemed every type of munitions ever made! I was there more than four years, some good time and nice people..some I still have contact with, not so nice people and bad times, enough to persuade me I did not want to spend another five years in some steaming far east station and getting paid less than any docker shifting loads!

Just down the road from me is Holton Heath which was once the largest munitions manufacturing site in the world,it's now a mixture of heathland and industrial estate,but some of the original buildings from around WW1 are still in use.

scraping anti-personnel mines is a good idea, however doing the same for vehicles mines, maybe not so. Mines would have been essential if we had lost the battle of Britain, and if a war was ever to come to our shores, our small professional army would need all the force multipliers it could get.

.... stores more than 60% of the entire Ministry of Defence’s munitions .... NOT very clever indeed!!!

Me: *tests grenade* *Everybody else in the ammunition depot:* 0_0

What a waste, children in Africa still could have eaten that...

Why are the items nearing end of service life not given to the squaddies for training?

I lived on this camp as a teenager with my parents 😮

Those sandbags aren't very full.

So glad the comments section is full of proper ally armchair experts who I'm sure are technical experts on British munitions storage....

Imagine the Russians/Chinese and North Koreans telling the rest of the world where they stored most of their ammunition and then giving you a RU-vid tour of the site????

Christ this is the most bush league demo range I've ever seen.

even if an enemy fighter got through and were to make a drop on this location all the munitions are spread out and stored in hardened cement bunkers and damage would be minimum. also my recollection back in the day is of obscure rapier surface to air missle sites. I doubt any jet could get through. somebody like Putin couldn't afford to lose an expensive jet to a much lower costing missle. British air defense is cool! IYA ammo YAS! sorry. couldn't help myself.

That is a strange way to store ammunition. I was frequently getting 20 x 139 DM 48 from a depot situated between Nordholz and Cuxhaven - Altenwalde in Germany and there it is stored in what looks like elevated dog sheds or huts with a table underneath, 2 Euro pallets in size inside, about 1,50 m high, apx 1 m elevated with big gates in front made from round steel bars so if any ammo is going off inside there will be no demage ... Hundreds of them all apx. 20 m apart.

Mines being taken out of service because they're indiscriminate? War is indiscriminate? Aslong as it doesn't put us at a tactical disadvantage because I can tell you now Russia and our other potential adversaries still use them. Another example of the British Army being tamed.

I doubt very much that if were the largest ammunitions depot in western Europe that it should be advertised especially now with Putin and whats going on now? Big mistake!!

Very interesting but I'm not sure it's the wisest thing to give away such a lot of information about this strategic site in the current circumstances, or indeed at any time.

Ya see. if you showed this instead of the bs snowflakes ads we would be respected

Wow... That's impressive! This American's hat is off to you!

This is almost as restricted as taking cameras or phones inside ADX Florence supermax prison.

What about land contamination

Didn't know Thor was in the RAF

The exploder appeared to be a Shrike, as I remember from the RNZE in the 1980 and 1990s. I suspect that it is an evolution of that model.

Is it safe to give out this information

We never had a chance to use any of our ordnance, even when i was with the shooting team we were restricted on how much ammo we could use. Then we watched in disbelief when they took most away for disposal when the end dates were up. No firing ammo, no throwing grenades, no firing rockets it all just sat there until it was disposed off.

I live just around the corner from here, always worried a nuke will go off

why don't they store their stuff in vacuum-sealed spam cans as the Russians do to prolong its shelf life

*'Kine - ton' ?* You'd think that the purpose of the site would suggest it should be pronounced _'kin - eh - ton'_ (as in _'kinetic'_ ) due to the massive amount of potential _kinetic energy_ being stored there, albeit in _chemical_ form.

So scary but that is the reality if your doing kind of job. Take care always and pray

I don´t get it. They spend money to dispose of smoke grenades? Give them to the grunts for training. wtf!

Good idea keep 60 percent of your ammo in one place 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thank you very much ! From Russia and Chaina with love! 😀😀😀✌🏾✌🏾✌🏾✌🏾

nothing better than telling Russia where it is

It wasn't always the largest. The largest ever in Europe since the end of WWII, was Miesau in Southwestern Germany.

Better let everyone know where we keep it all

At lest your enemies no exactly were to strike first the GRU be like look what's on RU-vid and we thought we would have to spend time and money 😂😂😂

Thought welford was touted as the largest site?

What's more valuable, the ammo or the 400+ historic cars stored in the adjacent British Motor Museum, let alone the compounds of brand new Aston Martin, Range Rovers, and Jaguars, stored around what was RAF Gaydon?

SGT JOHNSON IVE MISSED YOU

Seems a bit naive to have 60% of your stock in one place, I would assume that would be the first thing to get blown up by spetsnaz if there were ever an actual war.

The war in Ukraine has clearly demonstrated that centralised munition stores offer an enemy an opportunity to inflict catastrophic harm to the ability to continue to fight. Very irresponsible, particularly as the location is common knowledge and the structure is not hard in any way.

Is it so smart store 60% of all ammo in one place? If russia bomb that place out you only have 40% left. The smartest place to store ammo must be in so many secret places as possible 😂 or? Why all in one place?

we used to use little nits of HE when we ran out of cooking tablets in our ration packs, it just burns nicely so I do not know why they made such a fuss about small samples.

Beirut has too many fireworks this place has too many booms

Very Interesting Film, Thanks FORCES TV! 👍🏼👍🏼

my dad was stationed there from 78 - 81 he was in the RAOC in A Coy and worked in the APB,s

They cant get at weapons so there trying for ammo nice try AFFA angels never die nffn HMS council

8:52 I like how this is 3 years ago and the British soldier is wearing Ukrainian colours on the patch on his right arm 😁💙💛🇺🇦

This is not the biggest ammunition depot of Western Europe. Veenhuizen in The Netherlands has the largest ammuntion depot in Western Europe. in Veenhuizen are more than 200 ammunitie storage bunkers.

6.15 mins - 85 grammes of explosive isn't going to do much ;-)

did he say 81 grams of PBXN 109? that sounds like nothing?

60% of UK munitions stock - so no problem us carrying on if there is a first strike then...

This would be a great target for any invaders. Thanks for showing everyone 😂

Welcome to the watch list lads

Grass is on the bunkers so aerial surveillance is more difficult to make out bunkers isn’t it? Not too keep it safe lmao

Great report Sian

Shame they never waited a few months, Ukrainian soldiers would have loved this stuff

Oh Brilliant, now everyone knows where it is

Why showing this in time of war ,shouldn't we protect ourselve ?

LOL. Mud. Always mud. Dose not matter what army they have to have mud.