The Secrets of Underground Britain WW2

[Gil Boyd]

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[bigduke6]

Good find Gil, managed to get through it all undisturbed with a few cans and a decent measure of rum......

[Peter Laidler]

Very interesting too. Reminds me that about 8 or so years ago after selling off part of the old Sarum (salisbury) army camp, the owners of one of the old Officers married quarters were clearing up the garden and uncovered an old manhole. Found some steel steps/stairs and entered into a huge underground open-plan type office area! Wasn't particularly deep underground, damp but not too wet either. The main entrance had been back filled years and years ago so there was only the emergency exit left. Lots of old rotten wood furniture plus steel lockers and bed frames. Apparently they were now the legal owners of it. Amazingly, there was still electricity to the incoming fuze board and some rudimentary lighting still working.

THst'd be my 250 metre range, machine shop and undferground garage sorted out once I'd got the electric lift sorted out. And before you ask........... No, I wouldn't have declared the live power source either!

[Gil Boyd]

Peter,
Interesting you raised that, we were based at Old Sarum as a family in the early 60's, could these have been for underground storage of additional weapons and supplies for "covert" use?

I digress slightly with an interest in bottoming out something I have had in the back of my mind since my teens, when I met one of my fathers old service mates who had retired and one night had too much to drink. He knew my interest in all types of weapons.
He told me of a chain of underground bunkers filled with food/water/oodles of ammo and a variety of weapons enough to equip a whole Platoon......so that would have been a massive stock pile. It was large enough to hold a Plt of men comfortably with bunk beds in there too.

He spoke of PIAT's/grenades in boxes and loads of Bren guns etc.all in racks and carefully looked after by those charged with this important underground movemnet position. They werte all ex servicemen and women who were too old for war service but fit enough to tackle the Germans if they ever made it across the channel.

These top secret bunkers stretched the whole of the British Isles and the next one didn't know where the closest one to them was, and so on for obvious reasons.
So from that I always watched out for any information whilst I was in the Police of such a bunker collapsing or being located in woods and locations "off the beaten" track so to speak.

Does this ring any bells, perhaps you know someone too who served with this clandestine unit? Very interesting subject, and one hopes the stores were all removed after the war!!!

---------- Post added at 12:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:22 PM ----------

I meant to say also, I don't mean the Royal Observer Corps bunkers either which are more obvious from the surface.......I mean totally covert and hidden.
Here are the links to the ROC posts:

[Peter Laidler]

Nope, this was a sort of underground ops room for the old airfiend that used to be at Old Sarum according to the newspaper reports.

There were always rumours about huge ammo storage facilities under Savernake Forest in Wiltshire. This was proved to be a myth after a joint service operation in the late 80's. It is said, from an answer in the Daily Mail 'answers to corresponents' that to date, no rumour of buried stocks of hidden/lost wartime stockpiles has ever proved correct.

[Gil Boyd]

Now that would be a challenge wouldn't it................sit in Kew for a few hours wading through papers to disprove that one, if only I had the time!!

[Peter Laidler]

I expect they already have been sitting there Gil. But generally, every man and his dog has listened to his dads friend of a friend who heard from his uncles sister who got laid by a soldier from Alabama who told her about another bloke who buried an Ordnance Field park full of jeeps and................ You know the old horse manure stuff. We're now in the realms of the buried spitfires fairy stories. But to date non of these urban myths have ever been qualified. And with ground penetrating radar, and 'other deep search facilities available to the Navy' that should be simple.

Found about 12 buried tanks on the Battlesbury bowl area a few years ago but they were simply soon-to-be hard targets (Shermans, Comets and Churchills) dug in to prevent a bank collapsing in on itself.

[Gil Boyd]

Here's our secret weapon.......................................

Ex Lieutenant Corporal Malcolm Vickers wants Dads Army against terror | UK | News | Daily Express

[browningautorifle]

We have bunkers here that were rumored to be full of guns in cases...the story got deeper every time with telling depending on how badly someone wanted to be believed. The tunnels and bunkers are still there but they're full of nothing. They were the bunker for ammo for coastal protection guns. Empty...

[Gil Boyd]

Whats this?
WWII Ruins and Bunkers in the UK

6th column: Inside secret WWII guerrilla bunker unearthed in East Yorkshire (video, pics) I don't seem to be able to open it must be tooooooo top secret!!

Quote: Claude Varley, now 88, was a member of the Bewholme Unit and was trained to kill with his bare hands: "We`re all in our 80s and 90s now – if we die without saying anything, the secret dies with us. When I signed the Official Secrets Act, there was sweat coming off my forehead – they were holding a gun to me, making me swear I wouldn`t say anything. I think that is why some people have never spoken – event though the Act only lasted 50 years. But it is important they do speak, so people know."