Secret Cold War Nuclear Bunkers (Hardcover)

Although this is essentially a book of cold-war archaeology, describing the steel and concrete evidence of a fifty-year war-that-never-was, it has at its core a central political premise. That is that all the bunkers, from the great US central government bunkers at Raven Rock and Mount Weather to the thousand or more tiny, five-man ROC posts that litter the British countryside, served one ultimate purpose, which was the protection of the paranoid United States Administration from nuclear attack, and by extension the preservation of the concept of democratic capitalism and the American Way.

This myriad defensive bunkers - a child of the US policy of 'forward defence' (though the British government would have it that her own bunkers were solely for the protection of her own Establishment) - ripples out from the United States' heartland through Canada, Greenland and the United Kingdom, to ensure that America's next war would be fought far from home, on the distant sovereign territory of her erstwhile allies. These bunkers are thickest on the ground (or rather under the ground) at the most vulnerable, furthest extremity of America's shield, where east meets west - on the eastern seaboard of the British Isles.

Contents of the book:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: THE AMERICAN 'BIG BUNKERS'

Deals with Raven Rock, Mount Weather, the Greenbrier bunker, Mount Pony, the FEMA regional bunkers, together with the flying and floating emergency war rooms and a brief history of the Strategic Air Command control bunkers.

CHAPTER 2: NORTH AMERICAN RADAR

Deals with the DEW Line, Mid-Canada Line, North Warning System, Pinetree Line, SAGE & BUICC (and their respective Group and Sector control bunkers), together with the various communication systems including NARS, WHITE ALICE, etc. The chapter ends with an account of the Texas Towers saga.

CHAPTER 3: NORAD & THE CHEYENNE MOUNTAIN COMPLEX

A complete account of the vast underground nerve-centre of America's Early Warning systems.

CHAPTER 4: THE BALLISTIC MISSILE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

Subjects covered include the BMEWS sites at Clear, Thule, and Fylingdales. The planning, construction and public misconceptions of the Fylingdales site is recounted in some detail, up to and including the current phased-array system.

CHAPTER 5: COLD WAR BUNKERS IN CANADA

Explains the construction, operation and eventual demise of the Diefenbunker and the various Provincial government bunkers, and the convoluted story of Emergency Planning Canada.

CHAPTER 6: THE ROTOR RADAR SYSTEM

Complete and detailed history of ROTOR, the 1958 Plan, LINESMAN/MEDIATOR, etc, with a complete gazetteer of sites. Also explains the history of the 1950s Anti-AircraftOperations Rooms and lists the current status of the AAOR bunkers.

CHAPTER 7: ROC and UKWMO

A detailed, post-war history of the Royal Observer Corps and UKWMO and its Observation Posts, Group, Sector and National control bunkers.

CHAPTER 8: CIVIL DEFENCE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

The rationales behind the various bunker building programmes from 1947 until the mid 1990s.

CHAPTER 9: UK EMERGENCY REGIONAL GOVERNMENT

Covers the 1950s Regional War Rooms, the Regional Seats of Government of the early 1960s, the s-RCs and the RGHQs. This chapter includes the full text of the 1963 'Spies for Peace' pamphlet.

CHAPTER 10: LOCAL AUTHORITY BUNKERS

Includes a brief post-war history of the Civil Defence Corps, and details ever structure from the 1950s Civil Defence Controls to the Thatcher period County and District Council super-bunkers. (Includes an extensive gazetteer of some 400 local authority bunkers)

CHAPTER 11: GPO UNDERGROUND TELEPHONE EXCHANGES and THE ESSENTIAL SERVICES BUNKERS

Describes the huge London 'KINGSWAY', Manchester 'GUARDIAN' and Birmingham 'ANCHOR' underground exchanges and the semi-underground, bomb-proof 'PR' repater stations that supported them. The chapter also covers the National Grid emergency control centres, Water Board bunkers, the BBC emergency centre, and the abortive plans for atom bomb proof regional railway control bunkers.

CHAPTER 12: UK CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMERGENCY WAR HEADQUARTERS

Includes complete histories of PADDOCK and the other wartime London bunkers together with the deep-level tube shelters, and explains the evolution of their cold-war roles. The chapter then goes on to describe in detail the development and construction of the Central Government bunker at Corsham (BURLINGTON), the Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood, and the underground PINDAR complex below Whitehall. The evolution of various other cold-war communications facilities in the Corsham quarries is also covered in this chapter.

The book is illustrated with approximately eighty photographs and thirty maps, plans and line drawings.

Excerpted from Secret Cold War Nuclear Bunkers by Nick McCamley. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpt from the Introduction: -

... "This huge concentration of American military assets in the United Kingdom is the reason that her countryside and cities are littered with bunkers built to protect key elements of the nation’s military and administrative establishment. There are great, complex bunkers for central government deep underground that have cost tens of millions of pounds to build and millions more each year to maintain; there are bunkers for regional government controllers who might or might not lead the post-holocaust national recovery; there are bunkers for the County Councils from which they would enact the local plans they often as not had never prepared; there are bunkers for water-board engineers who would ensure that every survivor had two litres of fresh water daily; bunkers for electricity board engineers who would ensure that the street lamps worked even if the buildings that lined those streets were swept away; there are bunkers large and small for the thousands of Royal Observer volunteers who thought they were protecting their own neighbours and community but were in fact just cogs in the vast machine that protected the American homeland; and there were bunkers for the radar stations built to give timely warning to the fighters and guns supposed to protect Britain’s airborne nuclear deterrent but in fact just protecting the US bomber bases in East Anglia and the great US early warning station on Fylingdales Moor.

This book is about that other aspect of nuclear war, the secret, invisible infrastructure, the networks of underground control bunkers and radar stations stretching across continental North America and Great Britain, whose existence has never been more than rumour. This network radiates outwards like ripples in a pond from the ultimate American bunkers built beneath mountains in Virginia and Colorado, and includes concentric arcs of early warning stations, foisted unwillingly upon the government of Canada, that stretch across the arctic wastes of her northern provinces waiting for a surprise trans-polar attack. Beyond these, even more powerful early warning radars in Alaska, Greenland and Great Britain search the skies for thousands of miles beyond the horizon, looking for the tiny pinprick that would herald the start of a Soviet missile assault. Below these, in the passive defence hierarchy, are the civil and military bunkers built to protect the governments and people of the host countries, principally the United Kingdom, who have accepted these early warning radars and US forward defence bases and have thus made themselves Soviet targets in their own right."

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