WHEN INVASION LOOMED

Evening Star, Issue 25698, 23 January 1946, Page 7

WHEN INVASION LOOMED

(From Our Correspondent.) (By Air Mail.)

LONDON, January 10. What incalculable time, labour, and money were expended in London alone on war-time precautions which were never needed. The first rush,- when war came in 1939, was protection against air raids. Except for psychological effect 75 per cent, of even that was wasted Later, after Dunkirk, furious precautions were made against invasion. ' Only then were the subterranean citadels hastened to completion in which were housed the G.H.Q. of our three fighting services. Fleet Street has now been allowed to inspect, one of these extensive catacombs It is in the Horseferry road, and an proached through a coal yard The fintrancp looks like a pill-box, but down below, under a roof of steel and concrete 12 feet thick, are nearly three miles of passages with 1,000 rooms. A power station is located 50 feet below, and the citadel was equipped to house

2,000 people, with provisions for three weeks wHiout contact with the outside world. TOUCH AND GO. Every conceivable detail had been carefully thought out and provided for. There was storage of 25,000 gallons of fuel, rampressed air stored in ste-1 cylinders to start the four watercooled engines, special ventilation, and elaborate precautions to solve the big problem o ; vibration, which would have been disairous to the delicate mechanism over-lead. Outside a few service heads and Civil Service officials, and of course the members of the Cabinet, not a soul got to know about the existence of those underground citadels. What a g-im drama would have been enacted in them, had Hitler's planned invasion _c«me off, and the Hun legions battled into London. Actually one flying bomb fell within 30 yards of the entrance to the Horseferry road stronghold. Tha-e was barely time for the policeman on duty to slam the blastproof door;. There were no casualties and only superficial damage to the citadel. Fart of it is still being used by a Whitehall Ministry.