Urbex: Kenton War Bunker

The official name for this location being the “Kenton Bar, 13 Group Fighter Command Headquarters”, the location of which first chosen in September 1939 due to its near central location in the 13 Group coverage area. It took approximately 3 months to construct the underground complex below the existing above ground installation, and a further 3 months to fully kit and supply it.  With the influx of radar and other field information most command rooms had a secondary filter room that would collate and filter down all of the information to provide an accurate and concise picture of the current situation to the group headquarters.  Unlike some other group command headquarters, Group 13, Kenton did this by building an entirely separate installation about a half mile from the main site known as the Blakelaw Filter Room, so the site at Kenton is purely a command headquarters.

Instrumental in defending Newcastle during the war, this bunker situated 20 feet underground on the outskirts of Newcastle was commanded by Air Vice Marshall Richard Saul and managed to stave off a massive attack by the Luftwaffe, so successfully that such an attack was never mounted again, securing its place in the history books as vital in the Battle Of Britain.

During the Battle Of Britain, Germans wrongly thought that 13 Group (North of Humber, Northern Ireland and All Scotland, commanded from Kenton) had little to no fighters in operation as they had sent too many backup resources to assist 11 Group (South East England). Working on this assumption they thought any attack on Scotland would go largely unscathed and duly dispatched a bombing fleet, on Thursday, 15th August 1940.

At noon on the 15th in inbound squadron of Heinkel bombers of Kampfgeschwader 26 and the Messerschmitt 110 fighters of Zerstorergeschwader 76 were detected over the north sea, and Air Vice Marshal Saul found himself with immediate use of three squadrons of Spitfires, one squadron of Hurricanes and one squadron of Blenheims in his two Northern England sectors. Normally he would have had a further 8 squadrons at his disposal, but at the time he had four and a half squadrons in Northern Ireland, the Shetlands and the extreme north of Scotland, too far away to be put into use. All he had left to rely on were 2 and a half squadrons of Hurricanes near the Firth of Forth, and a squadron of Defiants which were currently near Glasgow on the Clyde. The Blenheims being no match for long range fighters, and the Defiants having suffered great losses in their last encounter with the Luftwaffe and had at least 100 miles to go to reach any of the likely targets of the incoming wave of attack left Air Vice Marshall Saul at a great disadvantage.

Sending out one local squadron to intercept the incoming attack, and bringing down a squadron of Hurricanes from the Firth of Forth to patrol Tyneside, a previously almost unprecedented manoeuvre, he put his plans into motion. As the threat became closer he launched a further three immediately available squadrons, leaving only the Defiants at the Clyde, the other squadron and a half of Hurricanes at the Firth of Forth and his local squadron of Belnheims as backup. The first squadron sighted the enemy aircraft approximately 30 miles off shore, the Germans outnumbering them 10 to 1, flying in three formations formed by bombers in the first formation and fighters in the second two.

Bewildered by the sheer number of aircraft he and his small squadron was facing, Flight Lieutenant Graham had to be asked if he had spotted the aircraft due to him not reacting to the sighting, to which he replied “Of course I’ve seen the b-b-b-bastards; I’m trying to w-w-w-work out what to do.”  After this brief hesitation taking advantage of his 3,000 ft elevation above the incoming attack he commanded each pilot to pick a target and to attack in a diving attack from their up-sun position.  This resulted in 2/3 of the pilots attacking the bombers directly, while the others came at the following fighters.

This counter attack initially had the effect of causing the bombers to form into the usual defensive circle whilst jettisoning their secondary fuel tank, before splitting into two formations both of which flanked by their own fighter support.  One of these formations headed for Tyneside, the second heading to the aerodromes at Linton on Ouse and Dishforth.

The first formation headed for Tyneside where they were intercepted by the second of the North East squadrons, with support from the Hurricanes from the Firth of Forth and the ground to air Tyneside gun till the Germans ended up dropping most of their bombs in the sea long before landfall.

The second formation, engaged by the other two North East squadrons and the Tees guns dropped theirs closer to shore near Sunderland and Seham Harbour but still failed to cause any significant damage, and almost ineffective to military targets they would have been aiming for.

These squadrons were so successful in holding back the attack that Air Vice Marshall Saul was even able to loan his final local squadron of Blenheims to the 12 Group on his southern flank! By the end of the encounter eight Heinkel bombers and seven Messerschmitt 110s had been destroyed, the rest of the fleet had turned back and not a single casualty of the fighters under Air Vice Marshall Saul had been suffered.

As well as the command centre for this impressive battle, 13 Group was also used as a handy rest and training site, as its far north position meant that pilots could serve time here with much less chance of getting shot down in duty.

13 Group was disbanded on the 20th May 1946, and the the Kenton Bar war bunker was marked as surplus to requirements in 1947, and at this time a lot of the above ground installation was levelled.

The underground installation was however pressed into further use as a regional war room for the growing fears of the Cold War, unusual in its use by the fact that it was a re-used previous installation, where as other regional war rooms were purpose built. The main reason for this re-use was the layout of the bunker at Kenton already complied very nicely with the requirements for a two tiered map room with observation gallery, which can be seen in this painting of the room in use.

Kenton War Bunker Painting

The increasing threat of nuclear war meant that central government with regional war rooms were feared to be ineffective due to break down in communications in the event of a nuclear strike, so the replacement of this system with autonomous regional seats of government led to the closure of the bunker sometime around 1960 as it could not provide for the expansion needed to hold the new staff required by this new decentralised structure of defence.

Kenton War Bunker - Viewing Gallery

Kenton War Bunker - Backup Batteries

Kenton War Bunker - Switch Gear

The rest of the album can be seen in my gallery by clicking here.

~Shepy