Secret and Not So Secret UK Bases and Installations

I think the only secret bases we have try to figure out how to make the British Military fight in second hand hand me downs from a charity shop. Don't kid yourselves we have secret bases making Star War weapons , hell in the 1940 ies the Home Guard had wooden guns. Thats Britain today good soldiers but crap equipment. We spend less on our Military than we do on scroungers who cheat the benefit system.

good! we spend too much as it is on defence. in fact defence spending is a fairly small proportion of total spending and it is completely right that it is so.

budget2005.treasury.gov.uk...

yep I live near it too. Its probably the grand daddy. The whole Iraqi operation was planned and controlled from there

Im gonna go have a look around the ones in my area, and see how far underground i can sprint without getting tackled by 30 SAS troops at a time

Great list

Thanks for putting that up.

Now I'll be off to fight reptillians and Dracos with the M60 heavy machine gun Santa gave me!

RAF Lossiemouth

This RAF base is currently the largest RAF base in the UK. I used to live near to it in my childhood and would go there with my family to watch the Jaguars/Shackletons taking off etc. The whole base is visible, with a road running right round its perimiter.

I think its highly unlikely that any unusual activity would take place there because its so exposed. A close friend used to be an aircraftsman there before moving to England on transferral, and he never mentioned anything odd (and he would have).

What you ought to be looking at is RAF Kinloss which is only about 10 miles away from Lossiemouth. It is virtually impossible to see into due to dense forestation surrounding it.

Interestingly, when there was a 'gorse fire' in 1996 in the west of Scotland (that required the army/raf and navy to tend to it...) the press release came from RAF Kinloss. I will always be convinced there was more to that than just a gorse fire...

Cheers.

I use to live in Reading. There use to be some old WWII buildings, an airstrip, and some other random stuff, which is now the suburb of Lower Early.

And in Shinfield (although not military), there is a closed up facility which was R@D into the dairy industry run by the University of Reading, some really strange stuff in there. A security patrol is still there but the place has been closed for many years.

Simon, excellent list !

Corsham Computer Centre is by far the most interesting, only because it's all so open, until you get up close and then security come along and give you the third degree, in a rather friendly manner.

Us Wiltshire folk have more than our fairshare of bases, we're incredibly lucky ! Not to mention our one time fame of "The Warminster Thing" and Cley Hill, Star Hill and other 60's/70's UFO hotspots.

Hi,

I have some information on both but I don't want to post this on the main board, U2U me if you'd like to know. Depending on the advice of more senior members once they have heard the info I may post on the main board.

Cheers

Rob

My Uncle claims to have been posted as a guard to a secret RAF listening post under the downs near to Beach Head, East Sussex. He claimed it was built early in WW2 and was then used as a a radar centre in the cold war.

This would have been around the late 50s early 60s, and apparently the governemnt still denies its existence.

He also claims he saw a ghost of a WW2 officer there whilst on late shift, but thats another story.....

Does anyone know anything about it, or is my Uncle telling porkies? I will quiz him about it next time I see him, but not likely to be anytime soon...

P.S. According to my friend originally from Fairford village, it was the main base for the US B52s heading out to Iraq, and that there are still nuclear warheads stored there. Its certainly not secret, though - if you drive there at night you can see the lights of the base from about 20 miles away. The road signs and B52s flying in and out are a bit of a give away too!

hi , are you able to double check with your uncle ?

IMHO , he is refereing to `raf beachy head `

here is the subbrit writeup

several details seem to indicate that the beachy head CEW ROTOR station is what he refers too , but other parts of your post flat contradict the notion that it is beachy head

Thanks for that, Ape. That base would certainly make the most sense - should have investigated a little more deeply before posting questions, perhaps - didn;t think to search for something as simple as "RAF Beachy Head"! Still honing my ATS skills.

The bunker would certainly fit with the descriptions of tunnels, but doesn;t fully fit with what else he told me. Possibly, he was exaggerating and bigging up the story a bit, as he did tell it to me as a ghost story mainly.

Not likely to seem him soon, but will certainly let you all know if he tells me anything that contradicts accepted knowledge about the base or it seems like its somewhere else.

There's no great mystery about QinetiQ either, it's simply a semi-privatised version of of the government agency formally known as DERA.

Loads of info here: en.wikipedia.org...

Hardly a front company when it's all freely available information..

Yeah, when DERA was split the larger part became QinetiQ in which the MoD has majority shares and Dstl - purely MoD run for all the nasties, Bio tech/Top secret projects etc.

RAF Buchan's been closed for some time now, it's remotely operated. As for Black projects running out of RAF Lossie or Kinloss, i really doubt that.

MoD Machrihanish is on care and maintenance and could go operational again soon, with a bit of work mind you. The SEALS dont maintain a manned presence their anymore i belive, but their hanger is still intact, heavily cordoned off and supposedly is still full of kit. The base is used Frequently by Special forces for training - the reason why the old weapons storage bunkers are shot to bits.
But apparently theres a lot of weird stuff that goes on up there at times, it does have the longest runway in the UK/EU and there's supposed to be a super bunker amongst other things...

[edit on 16/2/07 by C ROBERTSON]

Here's a site worth looking at, gives full OS map coordinates and G.E./multimap images too

*Nod*

I was thinking about applying for a job there, at one point, but the bit I was interested in was in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't get the results I was hoping for from uni either so let it slip.

One of the interesting things was that one of the sweeteners put up on the website to entice graduates was the fact they had access to hardware and software which was years in advance of what was commercially available.

Playing with that new tech all day seemed like a great way to earn a living

Suprised "Ouston" is not up there. It has a huge underground complex that has trucks carrying warheads that dissapear into the labrynth underground never to re surface.

Its a old RAF place that was recently a infantary training camp

Hi,

I noticed you have left RAF Chenies in Buckinghamshire off the list??

In 1959 RAF Chenies along with RAF Bovingdon was selected as an ideal site for the construction of underground silos for the Blue Streak missile programme.


More info I found here www.subbrit.org.uk...

Best regards,

Timeslice.

Thanks for that one !!
Tell me more !
Just looked on Google Earth and cannot see any tunnel entrances but there are a lot of spoilheaps on the old runway and a heavily fenced area on one runway.

i live round the corner of GCHQ lol My dad lives at the dounut one huge satellites everything out side but only 20% is above ground they both have a tunnel system connecting the 2 rail way to transport workers.

they knocked down half of the old gchq only leaving a small entrance on a hill and for walking staff they can only access through a entrance thats in a public field. they built a sainsburys where i work now and a few residencial homes now where the old gchq bit used to be.

theres 2 huge chimney like towers chugging smoke from ventalation system and there a big green building in the middle of the which is light 24 hours a day woul dhave a clue what in there.

[edit on 19-6-2007 by Swissgarud]