Wartime Watnall - Cold War National Service memories

on
c.1960 - RAF Watnall band practise in the
subterranean telephone exchange (PBX)

When WW2 ended and the Cold War with the Soviet Bloc began, the continued need for robust air defence of the UK meant that RAF Watnall, a key hub of the country's early warning radar systems, was retained. However, it was no longer staffed by the wartime WAAF girls but by young male National Service conscripts. 

In 2008, a former National Serviceman who served at RAF Watnall during this time, recalled his experiences here for the Notts Evening Post. 
Gerry Kreibich², from Urmston in Manchester, was only 18 when he arrived in Watnall in 1952. His fledgling career as a journalist on the Warrington Guardian had been interrupted by his National Service call up. Things were not all bad though as he met his wife Una in Kimberley while he was stationed here. Gerry is now 90 and Una is 88, they recently celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary at their Matlock Bath home.

Gerry Kreibich (left) outside RAF Watnall's 
Trough Lane barrack blocks c.1952

After his National Service, he resumed his career eventually becoming editor of the Matlock Mercury and then moved into teaching journalism in Sheffield, one of his ex-students being a certain Jeremy Clarkson. 
You may have seen Gerry on TV as he was interviewed as part of Channel 4's "Restoration Man" program about the Watnall "Secret Bunker" project³ in 2014. Thousands of tons of soil were removed to uncover the wartime Filter Block where Gerry worked and much of the old subterranean building is now visible.
He's a very talented musician too and, despite his age, still plays piano in a pub jazz band in Matlock. He also founded RAF Watnall's very own station band. More about that and plenty more in his excellently written article which is reproduced below.

National Service

National Service raw recruits
From 1949, all healthy males in the UK, aged 17 to 21 years old, were required to serve in the armed forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years. So with the departure of the WAAF girls, the demographics of RAF Watnall and the village were changed dramatically. The Ops Room bunker was still kept open but not on a 24-hour basis. The Filter Block bunker was closed apart from the six-position, Administrative Telephone Switchboard which was retained as it was an important link in the RAF Telephone Network. Then in the very early fifties the Ops Block was closed down and the Filter Block re-opened to house an improved radar system called ROTOR¹ and a new Air Traffic Control Centre was built behind it in the railway cutting. It was down in the Filter Block that Gerry found himself posted...

Nottingham Evening Post April 5th 2008 - by Gerry Kreibich

It seems strange to be writing a ‘history piece’ about my time in the RAF - I’m only a young chap of 74, after all! But there’s no escaping the fact that RAF Watnall has itself become history.

It lives on only in the memories of people like me the thousands of young chaps who passed through its wide gates between 1940 and 1961. I had never heard of the place until one day in 1952 when, aged 18, I completed my fighter-plotter training at Middle Wallop, near Salisbury. A corporal with a list of names in his hand lined up about 20 of us and announced: “You're going to Watnall.” A few days later we arrived in Kimberley by train (yes, the station was there then) and climbed aboard the trucks that were to take us up Newdigate Lane and left along the main road to the camp gates. You can still see exactly where they were - the flattened kerb is unchanged. though the wide entrance where the grey-blue RAF vehicles used to come and go is now blocked by a fence and a sturdy hedge.

Former entrance to RAF Watnall now Fernwoods c.1978

All other traces of the camp have long since disappeared. A smart housing estate now covers the area where there used to be a little wooden town - guardroom, an education block, rows of billets that each housed about 20 men, a NAAFI building, sick quarters, and even a station cinema called the Astra.

Today's street-guides show only one familiar name, Trough Lane. I was in Hut 15 for some months, and it was Trough Lane that passed outside our windows. There was no talk of terrorist threats in those days, so the perimeter fence was in poor shape. I remember that vividly because I often scrambled over it when I came in after midnight, rather than use the main gates and risk being pounced on by a white-belted SP from the guardroom.

Gerry's barracks block is shown top left, inside the
camp perimeter fence alongside Trough Lane 

RAF Watnall played an important role in Britain’s air security, and we were all aware that we shouldn’t say too much about what we actually did underground in the impressive operations block [he's actually talking about the WW2 Filter Block down in the old railway cutting] half-a-mile away, near, what was then Blanchards Bakery. 

SPY PLANES

Working on shifts from an hour before dawn until an hour after dusk (we presumed that no one expected enemy spy planes to come when it was dark!) we used to march in threes along that stretch of road and disappear from view down a half-overgrown lane near what is now a garage and filling station.

Steel fencing blocked the way as we neared the ‘ops block’ and, despite being in RAF uniform, we all had to show ID cards before the gate was opened. There was more delay while the guards at the main gatehouse telephoned ahead for the mighty steel door of the underground block to be opened from inside and there was a third delay, at the top of some stairs inside the building, where we passed through double airtight doors into the operations block proper. These were wooden doors and they had a reinforced window the size of a postcard through which we could see the peering face of the chap manning the desk just inside (who wouldn't let us in until he'd had the all-clear from the guards outside). The chap manning the desk was sometimes me - we had to take it in turns for about an hour at a time.

Inside the 'ops block' in the 1980s
when it was used by the local gun club

I've often wondered if the air-pipe is still sticking out of the ground somewhere in the long grass that now covers the area. It led down through earth and concrete to the little common room where we'd sit and read or chat when we weren’t actually working at the map-tables wearing our mouthpiece-and-headphone headsets (we did roughly one hour on and one hour off, because tinny voices from far-off radar stations gradually drove us crackers!).

There was an electric red-ring cooker on a shelf in the corner and we could boil eggs and do bread and butter this was often breakfast, in fact, for the chaps who came on at about 4am. It could get pretty warm down there, and the hot air escaped through a grille in the ceiling. 

Sometimes, on a hot summer day, a few of us would come out into the fresh air during our break and lounge around in the field up above - and if you were near the air-pipe you could hear the muffled voices of the chaps who were still down below. We used to joke grimly about the possibility of some intruder dropping a stick of dynamite down the pipe. But the place was well protected, as I have said, and only someone landing by parachute could have reached our grassy roof.

The Air Traffic Control Block and stairwell down in the railway
 bunker behind the Filter Block in the 1960s above and c.1980 and 2021 below

2021 - Back of the Filter Block (now inhabited)
and entrance from the Air Traffic Centre stairwell

Now I come to think of it, we probably got this idea from the mischievous practice of pranksters climbing on the roof of an army or RAF hut and quietly dropping lumps of coal down the chimney - the result being a stove that gradually heated up during the night until it was a white-hot pillar of steel that had everybody dripping with sweat and opening all the windows.

COURT APPEARANCE

During my time at Watnall I met a girl from Kimberley and we have now been married for 53 years. I spent many happy hours down at her house (sneaking back into camp over the Trough Lane fence at midnight) and was once stopped by a policeman as I cycled along Newdigate Lane without lights on my bike. I made an appearance at court in Nottingham, pompously conducted my own defence and was fined 30 shillings! Does anyone bother with things like that today? Live entertainment was occasionally laid on at the camp cinema, and those of us with local girlfriends could bring them along, signing them in at the guardroom. I recall one show in which a hypnotist stretched one of our chaps out with his heels on one chair and his head on another and then got another airman to sit on him as if he was a plank of wood. Very impressive, and the memory has stuck with me. 

RAF Watnall huts c.1960 with a
semi-submerged Stanton air raid shelter visible

My girlfriend, then only 17, came to that show. And she also came on to the camp once when I was ill in bed with flu in the Sick Bay hut. The guards let her stand outside the hut and talk to me through the window and pass me a bag of goodies that her mum had sent. Wonderful, innocent days! The only females at RAF Watnall, apart from a few officers, were the local girls who worked in the NAAFI and served us with our mugs of tea, buns and cakes and my favourite drink at the time Pepsi Cola. It surprises people when I tell them I was then teetotal - young lads away from home for the first time are expected to run wild. But the discipline of RAF life seemed to keep us in check, and most of the lads I knew were non-drinkers.

The Royal Oak pub was just down the road from the camp gates, but most of the off-duty Watnall lads were more likely to be found in Nottingham, at the pictures, clumsily circling around at the Ice Stadium, or simply walking around in the city centre. 

There was virtually no trouble on the city streets in those days. RAF police in their smart white caps were on constant patrol and we were all on our best behaviour. A uniformed airman strolling hand-in-hand with his girlfriend would disengage from her until the SPs had passed. 

New recruits arrived at Kimberley Station and were
ferried up Newdigate Road by RAF lorry
STATION BAND

The camp's administrative buildings and the officers’ mess were on the other side of the main road, where there is now a vehicle-testing centre. There was a small parade ground just inside the entrance and a music room. I'd played the piano in a band when I was at school, and about seven or eight of us got together at Watnall to form a station band. 

We played in the officers’ mess a few times, and at Cloverlands (an army camp off Newdigate Lane, somewhere across from what is now Kimberley Comprehensive School). We also played at a Methodist schoolroom at Cinderhill where someone gave us a harmonium that we carted back to the camp music room. But the best gig was at RCAF Langar, where the Canadian Air Force were based. Transport was no problem for these outside engagements, we travelled in style in the back of a lorry. Sweets were still rationed at this time and some other items were in short supply, but the Canadian base was short of nothing and we came back with all sorts of goodies.

I had an embarrassing musical experience at the pub just along from the camp in the direction of Eastwood . (It must have been the Queen’s Head, though it looks very different today) We had a demob party in a back room for a couple of chaps who were leaving. I was on the piano, and one of the chaps surprised us with his fine tenor voice.

HASH OF IT

Between us, we managed a passable performance of Jerusalem, and the landlord was so impressed that he asked us to do it again for the crowd in the main bar, where there was another piano. So in we went and this time we made a complete hash of it. I can still remember slinking away with my head down.

Most of the National Service lads who were at Watnall probably never saw the place again after demob. But my wife has relatives in Kimberley and we live only 20 miles down the road in Matlock Bath, so I still see those streets I knew so long ago. Not a lot has changed, it seems, apart from the disappearance of the Wolsey factory fortress and the arrival of Sainsbury's. But the youngsters who loiter in the shopping precinct would give me a funny look today if I walked by, like an apparition, in that itchy blue uniform that was once such a familiar sight in Kimberley.

Happy 90th Gerry! August 2023


Other Memories

Various online forums and websites have sprung up to gather ex-Forces reminiscences. Another Cold War RAF Watnall veteran recalls the level of paranoia in the period...

 "I worked down 'the hole' as we called it. Arrived there from RAF GAN about October '60, and stayed there until sometime in '62 [posted to ADEN]. These were the best years of my life! Remember the Royal Oak? The cabin? Spent a lot of happy times there, and the Cherry Tree, The Hand Inn [Parliament St] Yates Wine Lodge, thrown out of The Trip a few times - happy days.. Made some great friends on the camp - would love to hear from anyone who was there at that period. I worked in FIS and in the control room - waiting for a pilot to have an emergency - and a lot of time in ADNC [Air Defence]. Boy! Things were really paranoid - similar organisations in UK and Europe watching and waiting for the attack! We took it in our stride as young eager guys - but in retrospect it was paranoid!"


When did RAF Watnall finally close?

RAF Watnall remained open until 1961 when the entire station was closed down including the Operations Block, Filter Block and Air Traffic Control Centre. A Mr. Long who served as the Unit Signals Warrant Officer at RAF Watnall on three separate tours of duty explains what happened just before the camp was finally closed...

“I left Watnall for the last time in April 1960 when was posted to Christmas Island but prior to leaving I attended some conferences at the Army Headquarters at Bestwood Lodge, where the possibility of using the Operations Block as a Central HQ for the Civil Defence was mooted. However, there was one vital drawback: there were already signs that the underground block was being affected by mining subsidence - not entirely unexpected - and that was the real reason why it has not been found possible to use the place for any worthwhile project.”

The Filter Block "Secret Bunker" uncovered c.2014

The Filter Room was left in a ‘State of Readiness’, the two metal entrance doors being welded shut. But, it was not long before thieves broke in via the ventilation duct and removed the brass and copper nuts and cables. Over the years of neglect many fires were started and various classified documents were either burned or removed. In the building, open for all to see, was a telephone directory (then current), listing all the secret sites in the UK and even the wartime Q sites. It was a security shambles. In 2014 the Filter Block's earth covering was removed exposing the underlying structure for the first time since 1943 as part of a project to turn it into a private residence. 

Sector clock
Channel 4's Restoration Man TV program followed the build for 18 months in 2014 and they tracked down and interviewed Gerry² for the show. He recalled how cool and quiet the underground bunker was and that the top level of the Filter Room's central atrium used to have curved glass windows looking down onto the main plotting table and the controllers used torches to shine down symbols onto the table. He also remembers the special Sector Clocks, a legacy from the WW2 Dowding System... "I'd have loved one of the wall-clocks - they were marked off in different colours at two-and-a-half-minute intervals, and we chaps who worked at the tables had to keep a constant eye on them and use markers of the appropriate colour so that the controllers (in a big glass-fronted gallery above us) could look down and see which information was bang up to date. Simple idea, but clever."

The Main Transmitting Station was situated remotely from the block, and was housed in a field near to the Rectory adjoining Nuthall Church. It housed several tall transmitter aerials and was used extensively during the war then allowed to deteriorate before being renovated and made serviceable again in the late fifties. It and the aerials were dismantled in 1962... 

RAF Watnall's aerials being dismantled 1962

For those interested in the technical and Statistical details of RAF Watnall and ROTOR there is an excellent website - www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/w/watnall/index.html which includes a couple of pictures of the operations block.

You can read more about the bunkers and the local boys who eventually broke into them (and how they did it) in the other Wartime Watnall articles here... 

https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/search/label/wartime%20watnall


Notes and sources

RAF Museum Hendon; Imperial War Museum; Notts Evening Post;  www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/w/watnall/index.html; Steve Adams Flickr; Tom Mirfield Flickr

https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/11051-raf-watnall/? - contributor called Chulla did the ATC building montage and map... "News that the old Filter Block of RAF Watnall is being converted to housing has caused me to dig out this photo I took of it in the 1960s with my Ilford Sportsman camera. It was taken from the railway bridge that passed over the site (of the old LMS station) that led to sidings. The Filter block can be seen with its vegetation-covered sloping roof, looking towards the main road. Because the camera did not have a wide-angle lens I had to take three pictures and montage them. The only photo I have seen of the station in its heyday is one showing  Sir Lancelot Rolleston of Watnall Hall waiting on the platform. The line was a spur from the LMS line from Nottm to Bulwell and passed over the Cinder Hill road on a stone abutment bridge, round the back of Sankeys, through Nuthall, then Watnall, then Kimberly and on through the arches of the LNER viaduct at Awsworth to Ilkeston. In the photo the trackbed is covered with vegetation, hiding the short tunnel under the main road, This map and description of the main camp at RAF Watnall comes from an issue of the After the Battle magazine. The Filter Block is not shown but is below the bottom right-hand corner. "


https://www.facebook.com/133418756750121/posts/bedbreakfast-bunker-raf-watnall-to-become-guest-house-news-httpowlyn9ugt-subbrit/479349128823747/
https://www.facebook.com/VenturingOffLimits/posts/watnall-tunnel-nottingham-was-a-suprise-when-i-got-down-there-to-see-it-had-been/100175121748420/

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