- 15 hours ago
Abandoned Engineering - Season 15 Episode 8 -
The Invisible Enemy
The Invisible Enemy
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00A top-secret facility in Scotland besieged by militant protesters.
00:07Once the site was exposed through the spies for peace leak, the government was terrified.
00:14In Oklahoma, a place of learning created with a disturbing objective.
00:20They wanted to change the children, to take them from their culture and their language.
00:27A small Greek island caught in a chilling web of controversy.
00:34Suddenly, this facility was on the front pages of newspapers all across Europe.
00:41And it was an international scandal.
00:44And in Northwest America, a military installation linked to a mysterious wartime mission.
00:51It was a 68-hour battle against an imaginary enemy.
00:59In the USA, six miles from Oregon's Pacific coast, is a staggering remnant, built during a time of national emergency.
01:18The first thing you see, and you can't miss it, is this vast structure.
01:28The thing that's just mind-blowing is just how big it is, how tall it is.
01:33Makes you wonder, what could you possibly store here that would demand this much space?
01:39This much space?
01:42Then you see something that gives you a clue.
01:45At the front is a large plane.
01:47So, was this an aircraft hangar?
01:50Yet the aircraft here today are not the ones it was built to protect.
01:56The structure itself is the key to unlocking this mystery.
02:01On closer inspection, you can see something remarkable.
02:06The whole thing is built out of wood.
02:08They started construction in the fall of 1942.
02:13And the reason that they used wood versus steel is that all the metal was being used for the war effort.
02:19The Japanese had already launched an attack on America's mainland, and they could do it again.
02:25The airships that flew out of this building were crucial in defending the country.
02:31One of these warships of the sky became embroiled in one of the most bizarre military incidents of the Second World War.
02:39Personnel from here were sent to fight an unseen enemy, but of course, everything is not as it would appear.
02:46Personnel from here.
02:52Yesterday, December 7, 1941, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
03:07Everyone knows about Japan's devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.
03:13But not many people remember that just a week after, a number of Japanese submarines made it all the way to the west coast of the United States.
03:22In June 1942, a long-range Japanese submarine successfully managed to shell Fort Stevens in Oregon.
03:31Japan also sank two ships.
03:34They fired on a couple of locations in California.
03:37It pretty quickly became clear that the U.S. didn't have sufficient infrastructure to defend their coastline.
03:48Christian Gerling is passionate about the history of American aviation and is an expert on this vast facility.
03:56So a total of 17 of these wooden hangars were built to act as a protective ring around the United States.
04:06But they weren't going to rely on conventional airplanes.
04:09They were turned to a very different technology to safeguard American lives.
04:13They were a secret weapon. They were airships.
04:23Airships were perfect. You could fly low enough and slow enough to be able to spot an enemy submarine.
04:29You were in the gondola, the cab, and each crew member had a pair of binoculars.
04:33And they were looking for Japanese periscopes. So it was a great observational platform.
04:40But given their enormous size, you need somewhere equally big to house them.
04:46This is Naval Air Station Tillamook.
04:51Construction began on the first of two hangars in October 1942.
04:55But building these behemoths was no easy task. Supplies of steel and aluminium were critically low because of the war effort.
05:06But there's one building material that the Northwest has in abundance, and that was wood.
05:13The race was on to get the hangars finished before Japan could once again threaten America's national security.
05:19A bitter winter hampered early efforts, and the hangar that survives today took nine months to build.
05:28The primary challenge that they faced in building the hangar was weather.
05:33And of course, in the Oregon coast, it rains considerably.
05:36It was extremely muddy, so bulldozers were getting stuck in the mud.
05:41The equipment that were being used to build the hangars almost came to a standstill.
05:46It was so foggy, they actually had to string telephone lines so workers at the top of the hangar could communicate with workers at the bottom of the hangar.
05:57But when completed, it was a record breaker.
06:01Hangar B at Tillamook is the largest freestanding, clear-span wooden structure in the world.
06:09The hangar itself is about 1,000 feet long, 300 feet wide and 200 feet tall.
06:14They used in excess of 3 million board feet of lumber, which is enough lumber to build 279 three-bedroom homes.
06:22The hangar is actually so long, you could literally lay the Chrysler building down inside of the hangar.
06:27In February 1943, the first of eight airships built at Goodyear manufacturing plants in Ohio and California arrived.
06:36This would have been a very active place during the Second World War.
06:43There would have been a lot of commotion going on, you had offices in here, you had maintenance personnel in here.
06:49You had crews getting the blimps ready for anti-submarine patrol.
06:52So there was a ton of activity that was happening in the hangar at any given time.
06:57On the 16th of March, the first patrol mission was launched.
07:02Fortunately, the crew was equipped with more than just binoculars.
07:06So the airships also used a very primitive form of radar called a magnetic anomaly detector, where they would look for magnetic anomalies in the Earth's surface to find these submarines.
07:18Anti-submarine warfare is mostly hour after hour scanning the waters and not seeing anything.
07:26It was the same story day after day of nothing.
07:30That would soon change.
07:33On the 19th of May 1943, Tillamook's communication building received an urgent dispatch.
07:41About 10 miles off the coast of Cape Lookout in Oregon, the USS PC-815, an anti-submarine vessel, started picking up irregular signals on its sonar device.
07:54The ship's commander quickly ordered his crew to fire on what he believed was a Japanese submarine.
08:03After six attempted attacks, the USS PC-815 runs out of ammunition.
08:10They were potentially a sitting duck.
08:13So the call went out to the two airships that were then operating out of the base, K-33 and K-39, to assist this Navy surface vessel.
08:21The airships, in addition to submarine detection equipment, were also armed with depth charges and a machine gun.
08:30Their role was to defend the U.S. ships and help scout the water for any signs of enemy submarines.
08:39Eventually, four other surface ships were called in to assist as well.
08:45Soon the ship's crew picks up another signal.
08:48Now they're convinced that there's a second Japanese sub in the vicinity.
08:52By 4.46 PM, 13 hours after the pursuit began, the PC-815 was finally restocked with depth charges by a supporting vessel.
09:02The ship's commander continued to hunt down the Japanese submarines, launching attack after attack.
09:12The fear now is that it's staking out its target.
09:19The race was on, and American lives were at stake.
09:23The fight continued on through the night and into the next day.
09:29But the enemy is nowhere to be seen.
09:32After 68 hours, the commander of the ship was ordered to call off the search.
09:42On return to base, the commander reported that he believed he had destroyed one or both of the submarines because neither had counter-attacked.
09:51But Navy officials immediately launched an investigation to establish the facts.
10:02The commander had used five ships, two blimps, deployed over a hundred depth charges, and was still unable to supply any of the evidence required to confirm a kill.
10:15The final report contained some astonishing findings.
10:18No subs were ever found, no wreckage was ever found.
10:23The airmen on the blimps, for example, didn't think there was any sign of submarines in the area.
10:29But the commander of this vessel was still convinced that he had destroyed two enemy vessels.
10:37So who was this mystery commander?
10:41His name was L. Ron Hubbard.
10:43Ron Hubbard.
10:44After the war, he would become a very successful science fiction writer and then go on to found the Church of Scientology.
10:54Now, L. Ron Hubbard was known to, let's say, stretch the truth at times.
11:01Even in his after-action report, you can see that Hubbard has a certain literary flair.
11:11But there was one piece of evidence from the Navy investigation that no amount of creative language could disguise.
11:17It turns out that the area where Hubbard and his crew first picked up these strange signals is well known for having natural magnetic deposits.
11:29So, it seems Hubbard may well have been fighting an imaginary enemy.
11:37For the next two years, airships from Tillamook continue to patrol the Oregon coast.
11:44During the course of the war, Navy blimps provided cover to somewhere around 89,000 convoys.
11:52Only one vessel under the protection of an airship was ever sunk, an oil tanker named the Persephone.
12:01That's a pretty impressive service record.
12:04The war in the Pacific dragged on until September 2, 1945.
12:10And at that point, of course, the Tillamook base was no longer needed.
12:14In 1948, the Naval Air Station was decommissioned.
12:24Today, Hangar B is home to the Tillamook Air Museum.
12:30We call it history, housing history.
12:33You have this amazing structure from World War II, an engineering marvel.
12:39These hangars show what we can accomplish when we're under a threat.
12:44On the Greek island of Leros stands a commanding structure with a shameful secret.
13:01Following along the coast, we find this amazing, vast, and powerful building.
13:07It looks like security was really tight here, but who was being kept inside?
13:16When you enter the building, it's extraordinarily unsettling.
13:20You see parts of a tent, parts of old clothing, and the place is filthy.
13:27It looks as if people were living here.
13:30The question is why?
13:31Upstairs, there's a lot of beds, there's colorful decorations on the wall, but also medical equipment.
13:39Could this have been a hospital?
13:41This was once a showpiece designed to demonstrate the might of a conquering nation.
13:46Its days as a glorious symbol of power didn't last long.
13:52As time passed, it became a den of depravity and the subject of a controversial expose.
13:58It created an international scandal that humiliated the Greek government.
14:06Because of this complex, Leros became known as the Island of the Damned.
14:10The first time I came here in 1966, on October 5th, when I remember.
14:21It was beautiful.
14:23It was the best memories.
14:25Petros Sakoglánis was 22 years old when he started working here as a nurse.
14:30The story of this now derelict shell began long before Petros arrived, during an era of European occupation.
14:57The structure dates back to a time when Leros wasn't under Greek control.
15:03Since 1923, this was under the influence of Mussolini's fascist Italy.
15:09It was built as accommodation for troops using the nearby seaplane port.
15:14Italy and then their Nazi allies controlled the island until the end of the Second World War.
15:21But eventually, these structures and the island were handed back to a united Greece.
15:30Life on Leros eventually returned to normal.
15:34But by the 1950s, a crisis was brewing on mainland Greece.
15:39This structure would be part of the solution.
15:42After the war, Greece was in the midst of profound change.
15:48The population was increasing and urbanizing.
15:51And all of this impacted the way that people with mental illness and physical disabilities were cared for.
15:59The hospitals in Athens and other major cities were filling up and were reaching breaking point.
16:05It was the opportunity that the producers of the government had to have the open buildings.
16:13It had to be an agreement from the rest of the psychiatrists, because they were buried.
16:20And the rest of the space was brought to them here.
16:24In 1958, this facility admitted its first patients, more than 300.
16:33It was officially called the Colony for Psychopaths, and later became known as the Leros Asylum.
16:41While there was some opposition to the new purpose of this building, there was also a lot of support.
16:47Many locals thought that it would provide jobs and opportunities for them.
16:51But soon, increasing numbers of people were being sent here, and within just a few years, there were around 2,500 patients at this facility.
17:18It was designed to care for about 600.
17:22Some of this meant that there was poor sanitation.
17:26A few toilets, hundreds, would have to use.
17:29It was even said that there was only one qualified psychiatrist for 1,000 patients.
17:34The outside world had no idea just how bad the situation inside the Leros Asylum had become.
17:56In 1989, the devastating truth of what was really going on in this facility was revealed.
18:04Reporters from the British newspaper, The Observer, recorded the squalid and terrible conditions that patients were suffering in.
18:13You had patients living naked and even tied down to their beds, bearing the marks of this really inhumane treatment.
18:22The shocking photos that accompanied the article revealed the brutal reality of life within these walls.
18:31When the story was published, they called this Europe's guilty secret, and there was condemnation all around, forcing the Greek government to react.
18:52We were struck and said that, because these things happen, they should be closed.
19:01We never showed that.
19:02We started to improve the situation, and we started to keep a new climate.
19:07We tried to improve the situation, and we tried to improve the situation, but mainly for patients.
19:18The reforms went far beyond the Leros Asylum.
19:23All over Greece, mental health institutions were thrust into the spotlight and found wanting.
19:31Across the board, wholesale changes were required to overhaul the broken system.
19:37Those improvements spelt the end for this site.
19:41The mental health issues began to reduce, because the public hospitals began to create psychiatric clinics.
19:51To get a psychiatric area, they had to go first from the public hospital.
19:59As a result, the number of patients being sent to Leros rapidly declined.
20:03Over the following years, patients were gradually moved into community care, and the institution's buildings were eventually shut down.
20:15By the late 1990s, the Leros Asylum was completely abandoned, and this distressing period was consigned to the past.
20:23But it's far from the end of its tragic story.
20:28In March 2011, Syria erupted into civil war, following a wave of pro-democracy protests that spread across North Africa and the Middle East, called the Arab Spring.
20:41The repercussions were felt on the small island of Leros.
20:47By 2015, more than a million refugees had arrived on European shores.
20:52Human traffickers would take these refugees, smuggle them to islands near Leros, and leave them to be rescued by the Greek Coast Guard.
21:03In March of 2016, the area in front of the hospital was opened up as a camp that was designated to be the initial meeting point of refugees entering the European Union.
21:16According to some estimates, there were up to 1500 people arriving on Leros every day.
21:25Refugees began living wherever they could, including inside these buildings, but without any running water, heat, electricity.
21:34For the next five years, the old Leros Asylum and the grounds that surround it served as a neglected home for desperate immigrants seeking a better life.
21:47A more humanitarian answer needed to be found.
21:51In 2021, the Greek government created a new reception center on the island for these people, and this camp in front of the hospital was finally abandoned.
22:02Today, there are no plans to restore or demolish the old asylum.
22:13But in the building's shadow, a growing tourism industry now thrives.
22:18In southwest Oklahoma, USA, are the remains of a complex built during an era of disturbing change.
22:39The buildings are all solid and functional. They're constructed with the same type of bricks and flat roofs and minimal decoration.
22:53When you enter the site, it's clear that the buildings are all in really bad disrepair.
22:57And inside are identical rooms. It looks like a dormitory. But who's staying here?
23:04Discarded toys and small chairs suggest this was once a space used by children.
23:10Over the years, hundreds of students would walk through these doors. For the most part, they came here forcibly and against their will.
23:19This site wasn't a one off. It was part of a much larger program across the nation.
23:24This is the start of a dark chapter of American history.
23:31What happened inside these walls would shape the lives of children across Oklahoma for generations.
23:37The kids came from many different tribes. They all spoke in different languages and they would get punished physically.
23:45So this place is very significant to the Native American community.
24:01Don't think there's very many people that don't have a connection. It's incredible.
24:07Yolanda Ramos works closely with the Kiowa, Comanche and Apache nations to maintain this place and to document its unsettling past.
24:19There were many students who came when they were about six years old.
24:24And in the early days, there were a lot of bad stories.
24:29And in the later years, there were better times.
24:32The origins of this place are tied to a number of government acts that tried to limit Native Americans' rights.
24:40This included the notorious Indian Removal Act of 1830.
24:45Thousands are forced to give up their land and relocate west of the Mississippi River.
24:52This created a territorial divide between the United States and Native Americans.
24:56A series of violent conflicts between those two communities would result in an extraordinary meeting.
25:06In 1867, the representatives of several Native American nations met with officials from the U.S. government.
25:14They came together to negotiate what became known as the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
25:19From the very start, the indigenous communities were at a disadvantage.
25:26The different languages spoken by the Native American nations required numerous interpreters, which created confusion and the opportunity for exploitation.
25:38In addition, they were pressured to accept the terms of the deal by the threat of military force and deliberate starvation.
25:45In signing the treaty, tribal leaders agreed to relinquish valuable lands and important hunting grounds.
25:53Part of that agreement was to educate the Native children, hence the boarding schools here being built.
26:01This one was called Fort Sill. It originally opened in 1871 and it moved here in 1892.
26:12Its distressing aim would never be forgotten.
26:18One of the purposes of this residential boarding school is to separate these children from their families, their communities,
26:26thus making them vulnerable to indoctrination with a new culture.
26:31These schools were built to assimilate the children.
26:36I think their idea of assimilation was to make the kids good little Christian boys and girls,
26:45to assimilate them to the white man's way and to pull them from their old ways.
26:52The main focus of the studies for the boys and girls was agriculture and home economics and English, of course.
27:05The curriculum the school enforced was influenced by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, a veteran military man turned educator.
27:13In 1892 at a national conference, Pratt makes his famous statement that essentially says kill the Indian in him and save the man.
27:23This model became the core philosophy of over 500 Indian boarding schools across the country.
27:29The schools achieved assimilation by operating with a strict military like regime.
27:34Culturally, we wear our hair long. When the kids came here, they cut the kids hair completely off and then they ultimately moved on to making them dress in military style uniforms.
27:48Just like the military, when children stepped out of line, they were given harsh punishments.
27:54It was a part of them teaching the kids discipline and another part of teaching them to become more like them.
28:08At the Native American school in nearby Anadarko, which operated on similar principles as Fort Sill, a tragic story demonstrates the climate of fear the children lived under.
28:23After a young boy was severely whipped, he and two friends attempted to run away.
28:29They were later found frozen to death outside the school grounds. They were just too terrified to come back.
28:37There are a lot of negative stories. There is so much history here. I got to take a second. Sorry.
28:45It makes me a little emotional.
28:49Essentially, it's ethnocide and this practice of attempting to strip away people's culture continues well into the 20th century.
29:01It wasn't until the Great Depression of 1929 that some progress was made on the rights of indigenous communities.
29:09Native American families are hit really hard because of lack of financial opportunities, structural racism and generations of land loss.
29:22In 1934, Franklin Roosevelt introduced the Indian Reorganization Act and this to become a catalyst for change at the school.
29:31This new law protected and restored land to indigenous Americans and encouraged self-government. It also supported the preservation and revival of Native American practices and traditions.
29:46They started to work on building new buildings for the campus in 1936, the gymnasium.
29:54And in 1939, they built the school building. So Fort Sill Indian School ultimately became somewhat of a lifeline for the Native families.
30:07I am half Comanche.
30:11A lot of people thought we were here for punishment, but it wasn't. I stayed here because my mother, she couldn't take care of me.
30:18Jimmy Ray Caddo enrolled at Fort Sill in 1938 when he was six years old.
30:28At first, I was scared. I stand over there at the corner of that building over there looking down that road every Saturday or Sunday looking for my mother.
30:38I stayed here until I was 21 years old and I never went home.
30:42The ethos of strict discipline still existed, but the policy of forced assimilation had ended.
30:51The education Jimmy received was now more focused on just teaching vocational skills.
30:57The goal of this school was to teach you to be farmers.
31:03We had about 35 cows. We had milk in the morning.
31:10School here, it taught me a lot.
31:13You know, I joined the Navy from here.
31:17I stayed until I was a chief petty officer.
31:20I learned from here how to get along with other people.
31:24That's why when I joined the Navy, it was right down my alley.
31:31So I did very good. I seen the world.
31:35In the years after Jimmy graduated in 1953, Fort Sill started to offer a more well-rounded education to its students.
31:44The quality of education did get better as time went on because they started to expand into more subjects.
31:54One student that I talked to said that she actually loved it because she was able to be around other students that looked like her.
32:03They were all Native American students and they all had a very strong sense of culture.
32:08Fort Sill continued to function through the 1960s and 70s.
32:19But its end was drawing near.
32:22In 1980, the Bureau of Indian Affairs closed the school due to a lack of federal funds to keep it going.
32:30Most of the kids at that point had been integrated into the public schools.
32:35And so they didn't feel like there was a need to provide further funding to the school.
32:46To date, 526 Native American boarding schools have been identified in the United States.
32:54Their impact will always be remembered.
32:58Research is ongoing to uncover the long legacy of trauma for those who are confined there.
33:06There are plans to build a new school on the site which will be used by Indigenous and Native American children.
33:14It is going to be a huge project.
33:16I absolutely do feel a responsibility.
33:18I feel like that I have to do my part in protecting our land and protecting our culture and in ensuring that the language continues on.
33:30And that's very important to me.
33:39In Scotland, on the outskirts of the capital Edinburgh, is a clandestine site built at a time of widespread paranoia.
33:47Following a rough dirt track, you come to a clearing with small brick buildings. It doesn't look like much, frankly.
34:00A fence still runs around the outside of the property.
34:05Whatever it is, it's still an air of secrecy that surrounds it.
34:09As you get closer to the unremarkable structure, it's impossible to ignore the solid steel doors.
34:15Their presence suggests this is a place with something to hide.
34:22What were they guarding?
34:24The answer lies deep within.
34:27The first thing you see is a long sliding tunnel leading underground.
34:31At a time of war, this was a subterranean headquarters, key to Britain's survival.
34:38Few people knew about it, and even fewer ever saw behind its walls.
34:43This was part of a much larger network that protected the whole country.
34:49Rumour was that the Queen herself would be hurried here if there was a doomsday scenario.
34:54I was conscripted into the RAF in September 1954, and after basic training,
35:08we were brought here and introduced to the place and was very impressive, actually.
35:14A super state-of-the-art building in those days.
35:18Alan Treloar was 18 years old when he was called up for national service.
35:24For 18 months, he served at this top-secret facility, which had been built in 1953.
35:31You weren't allowed really to tell anybody anything of what you were doing.
35:36When I went home on leave or for a weekend, parents wanted to know what I was doing,
35:43and I told them the bare minimum of what I knew I was allowed to do.
35:48There was a very good reason the military personnel based here were sworn to silence.
35:54Their mission was to safeguard the United Kingdom from total annihilation.
36:00In the early years of the Cold War, the main threat was long-range Soviet bombers carrying deadly nuclear weapons.
36:07To counter this danger, Britain's Air Ministry developed a new radar network codenamed ROTA.
36:17If an attack from the Soviet Union were to come over the North Sea, Scottish radar would be the first to detect it.
36:23The Royal Air Force needed somewhere secure to coordinate the rotor radar network in Scotland, where no one would ever see it.
36:33What they built was a subterranean fortress. Three stories deep, the complex covered an area of over 37,000 square feet.
36:43It was called Air Defence Notification Centre North, and it formed part of the United Kingdom's first line of defence had World War III ever erupted.
36:55It was the largest nuclear bunker in Scotland, but barely anyone knew it existed.
37:05It was a maze of corridors and rooms around a huge central atrium, where a map plotting table allowed RAF officers to compile a full picture of any potential incoming attack from Soviet bombers.
37:20Most days, day-to-day work, was reporting flights which were planned by RAF Bomber Command.
37:33And it was up to us to plot them and identify them using the radar and the other means that we had.
37:41On numerous occasions, the Soviets tested the UK's new defence system.
37:46And, of course, sometimes there were Russian airplanes which shouldn't be there, and we were able to scramble aircraft to go and intercept them and accompany them out, out of the area.
38:03But by 1956, just three years after it became operational, the complex was already obsolete.
38:11Missiles could be fired from thousands of miles away.
38:16The weaponry was now more advanced than Britain's radar network.
38:23That didn't mean the bunker's use to the country was over.
38:27Although the bunker no longer functioned in its operational defence capacity, the engineering behind it was still immensely valuable.
38:37The British government believed that the bunker would have been able to withstand a three-megaton bomb dropped in the city centre of Edinburgh.
38:46So the bunker's designation was switched from defence to survival.
38:54It was known as a regional seat of government, or RSG for short.
38:59Dr Sean Kinnear is a historian and expert on Scotland's Cold War history.
39:07Here at Barnton, there would be about 400 people specifically chosen, so after a nuclear attack, they would be the central nucleus to try and restore some form of government and society in the aftermath.
39:21There was no scope, unfortunately, for the staff to bring their families here.
39:27They would have faced a very difficult choice as to whether or not to come.
39:31And, although it's never been confirmed, it has been suggested that this would be the place of refuge for the Queen if there was a nuclear strike while she was in Scotland.
39:42Yet, as the government made preparations to survive a doomsday attack, there was increasing public concern about the escalating nuclear arms race.
39:54While many protested peacefully, others resorted to more militant methods.
39:59The location and function of the bunker remained a secret until 1963, when an anti-nuclear group called the Spies for Peace managed to break into another government bunker in the south of England.
40:15There, they found a load of classified documents. These outlined the locations of other RSGs around the country. And these directed them to a previously undiscovered base right outside of Edinburgh.
40:30They wanted to expose this network of bunkers that they were saying was for the privileged few, and the rest of the population were just going to have to take what was coming in terms of a nuclear attack.
40:43So when they exposed sites like this, it was to say, we have found your network. It's not as robust as you thought, and now everyone knows about it.
40:52The government was terrified. There was about 200 or so protesters that came to pick it outside the fence.
41:00With the secret out, Barton Bunker became the target for regular anti-nuclear demonstrations for the next decade. They demanded the site to be shut down.
41:09There were several break-ins and there were sabotage attempts.
41:16But as the tensions of the Cold War faded, the protests began to ease. And in 1983, the bunker was officially closed.
41:26So, at that point, the site became an attraction for local vandals who would break in and slowly, bit by bit, tear the place apart.
41:39Arsonists eventually found their way into the property. All the equipment and furnishings that hadn't already been stripped out were destroyed and the bunker was left a blackened shell.
41:52In 1996, the derelict site was purchased by private owners. They are now in the process of restoring this fascinating Cold War relic.
42:07The intention is to bring it back to resemble what the structure would have looked like whilst it was in operation during the 1950s and give back to the community, allow them in to see what they weren't allowed to see for so many years.
42:23So many years.
42:24So many years.
42:53So many years.
42:54So many years.
42:55So many years.
42:56So many years.
42:57So many years.
42:58So many years.
42:59And so many years.
43:01Yes.
43:02They are.
43:15Well.
43:16So many years.
43:17They watched it in one day.
43:18They knew they knew a将.
Be the first to comment