Monument record 8678/1/1 - Nuclear Bomb Stores, RAF Wittering

Six nuclear bomb storage bunkers, constructed in September and October 1952 and designed by the Air Ministry Works Department as part of the United Kingdom and NATO strategic airborne nuclear deterrent.

{1} The deterrent effect of a nuclear equipped bomber force was the sole justification for the V-force. The provision of nuclear weapons storage & maintenance facilities is thus a key element of any V-force airfield. As nuclear bomb technology advanced so stores extended etc. First RAF operational atomic bomb was ‘Blue Danube’ a large & cumbersome device needing large protected stores and separate cubicles to hold its fissile cores. It was forseen that manned airborne nuclear deterrent would become increasingly vulnerable to improved Soviet defences. To extend life of the V-force, a stand- off missile, ‘Blue Steel’, was developed. Deployed at 2 main airfields (one of which was Wittering) with attendant servicing facilities.

{2} MATERIALS: Reinforced concrete to floors, walls and roof, all under a natural earth mound.

PLAN: The six bunkers have individual access roads leading from a central spine road connecting them with the fissile core stores. The entrance to each bunker either faces the side wall of its neighbour or open land, to minimise blast damage should one bunker explode.

EXTERIOR: The six earth mounds each have a single entrance set back into the mound below a deep concrete overhang and between concrete side walls dropping down to the ground at the perimeter of the mounds. This has tubular handrails all round. In either the right or left of these concrete outer walls are recesses containing the electrical switchgear and the air-conditioning room for each individual installation, and they terminate in a further concrete wall where there are the doorways. Bunkers Vw 16 and VA 22 have their original double timber folding doors on horizontal top and bottom runners and with an integral pedestrian entrance as well as the original light fittings. The remainder have 1980s steel vertical roller doors and plain pedestrian doors to one side. INTERIOR: The bunkers have rectangular interiors with reinforced concrete roof joists and similar side pilasters which support the wide horizontal rails on the side walls. These formed the runways for a manually-operated five-ton steel top-running bridge crane with an upper running trolley and hoist manufactured by Herbert Morris Ltd. of Loughborough. The cranes survive intact in bunkers Vw18 and Vw21. Bunker A22 has a similar type of motorized crane made by Matterson of Rochdale in 1958. In the end wall, over the doorways and in the lower part of the opposite wall, are two square ventilation grilles for the forced-air ventilation system fed by compressors in a recess in the outer walls.

<1> Cocroft W.D., 2001, Cold War Monuments: An Assessment by the Monuments Protection Programme, (part checked) (Report). SNN101426.

<2> Historic England (formerly English Heritage), Ongoing, National Heritage List for England, (checked) (Website). SNN107872.

Record last edited

May 20 2022 9:54AM