UNDERGROUND CITADEL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26043, 5 January 1946, Page 5

UNDERGROUND CITADEL

LONDON’S WARTIME SECRET THREE MILES OF CORRIDORS LONDON, Jan. 3. One of the war’s most closely-kept secrets was revealed to-day when it was disclosed that if London had 'become a'Stalingrad a subterranean fortress in Horseferry road, Westminster, would have enabled the War Cabinet, chiefs of staff, and their immediate personnel, numbering 2000, to carry on for three weeks without contact with the outside world. It is the largest of tftree such underground citadels, construction of which was begun on strategic sites during Britain’s most critical days in 1940, when the country was threatened with invasion. It was sunk to 60 feet below street level on an already excavated site of an old gasometer. It contains three miles of corridors and nearly 1000 rooms.

The fortress is bombproof and poison gas proof, and has its own power plant and water supply. Radio experts believe that an atom bomb would not have affected the activities inside the citadel’s “ crust ” of 12ft thick steel and concrete. A miniature power station maintains, among other services, lighting, ventilation, air conditioning, and cooking. Although the citadel was never put to full emergency use, it housed for four years, and still houses, Government departments. Passers-by walk past the inconspicuous entrances without suspecting its secrets. A flying bomb hit the, citadel in July, 1944, and merely “ scratched ” it.