Battle of Britain Bunker

#70

Sixty feet under Uxbridge, this operations room ran Fighter Command’s No. 11 Group—the London sector—during 1940. Here the Dowding System stitched radar plots, observers’ calls and radio control into a single decision loop that kept the Luftwaffe at bay. The restored room, with tote boards, coloured clocks and a vast plotting table, shows how information, not just aircraft, won the battle. Budget 90 minutes: surface museum first, then the guided descent.

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Opening Hours

Sunday: 10:00 – 16:30

Monday: 10:00 – 16:30

Tuesday: 10:00 – 16:30

Wednesday: 10:00 – 16:30

Thursday: 10:00 – 16:30

Friday: 10:00 – 16:30

Saturday: 10:00 – 16:30

Admissions

Adult £12.00

Child £7.00

Concession £10.00

Group £Group of 15+

What's not to miss inside?

Operations Room

The war’s nerve centre for southeast England

Plotters with rakes slid blocks across a giant map as controllers ‘scrambled’ squadrons by telephone and radio.

Watch the clock colours—yellow, red, blue—tick with the plots; that was the tempo of air defence.

📍 Bunker level, guided tour only

Dowding System Explained

World-leading network warfare—1940 edition

Chain Home radar + Observer Corps + sector control = minutes of advantage turned into survival.

Follow one ‘raid’ from first radar blip to an interception order on the tote board.

📍 Surface museum, timeline wall

Voices in the Headset

Stress you can hear

Real transcripts of clipped commands and acknowledgements from controllers and pilots.

Count how many words it takes to task a squadron. Brevity was a weapon.

📍 Audio stations

Churchill’s Visit

15 September 1940, the turning point observed

Churchill watched from the balcony as raids peaked; he left to declare the day decisive.

Stand beneath the balcony and imagine every decision reverberating up those stairs.

📍 Ops room gallery notes

🤓 Fun Facts

Those coloured sectors on the big clock weren’t decorative—controllers used them to timestamp plots so they knew, at a glance, how ‘fresh’ each sighting was.

WAAF plotters (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) provided much of the bunker’s workforce; the ‘rake’ jobs demanded spatial memory and split-second hearing.

On ‘Battle of Britain Day’ (15 Sept 1940) Winston Churchill watched operations here; two days later he gave his ‘so many to so few’ speech in the Commons.