Britain's top secret underground bunker

Western Approaches is Britain's top secret underground bunker and it's right beneath us here, in Liverpool.

Transcript

00:00 Liverpool is basically house and underground city. There's so many different tunnels and

00:06 things running underneath and this is definitely a big part of that.

00:11 You were once required to sign the official secret act to enter the building behind me.

00:17 Now it's open for visitors to freely explore. Western Approaches is Britain's top secret

00:23 underground bunker and it's right beneath us here in Liverpool.

00:28 The main operations room is definitely my favourite room in the building and it's what

00:34 I like to describe as kind of being as close to the front line as you could get without

00:39 actually being out there fighting. Most likely if you were one of the women working in the

00:43 room you'd be the one actually plotting the locations of everything on that board all

00:47 day every day.

00:48 Today the wartime bunker has been restored to exactly how it used to be and is open to

00:54 the public as a memorial to those who died to save Britain and the rest of Europe. Visitors

01:00 can take a step back into history to the original building where the battle was fought and won.

01:07 We only really know what we've heard from the people who used to work here. Very few

01:13 people actually talked about what they did during the war. It's only those who decided

01:19 to speak about it at some point who worked here in this building that we know so much

01:25 about the place and how it operated.

01:27 With the outbreak of war in 1939 the Royal Navy acquired the newly built Derby House

01:33 in Exchange Buildings and work began on a new top secret headquarters including a two-storey

01:41 underground bunker. With walls and ceilings of thick reinforced concrete the headquarters

01:47 had a staff of nearly 1,000 Royal Navy and RAF personnel. 80% of them were women.

01:56 We still have quite a lot of people who come in and say that their relative used to work

02:00 here in the building but very few of them know what role they had here. Maybe they'll

02:05 know the service they were in but not what they actually did. I think it was it must

02:11 be about four or five years ago now the last person we had to visit who actually worked

02:17 here.

02:18 The labyrinth of rooms and offices is a precious time capsule and although the wartime staff

02:24 have long gone a visit to the museum will transport you back to that time and make you

02:32 ask questions about the people who once worked here.

02:37 Quite a lot of people don't know the role we had to play in the Battle of the Atlantic

02:41 outside of ships coming in through the docks. So it's not just keeping this piece of history

02:48 alive it's also kind of educating more people on it who before would have had absolutely

02:55 no idea the role that we had to play.