Western Approaches Command - Fighting U-Boats with Wrens

[Music] [Music] just a quick note before we start this video some of this is obviously recorded here in the studio others parts of it in fact a significant portion of it was recorded live at Western Approaches Command and unfortunately at the very last minute we were unable to secure the proper camera equipment so all of this was done very impromptu with basically my home camera thus some of the sound quality isn't fantastic and there is a bit of a breeze in some of the outdoor portions I've done my best to modify volume and cut out wind noise but some of the audio footage might not be quite up to the same quality that you're used to I do apologize for that in advance and hopefully further videos from live locations will not suffer quite the same amount now on with the video back in the First World War one of the keys to defeating the u-boat menace was the adoption of convoys and quite why this came about as a general tactic late in the war and how exactly affected the tide for that particular conflict is the matter for an entire other video but it is the starting point for this one in that conflict whilst overall direction fell to the First Sea Lord the day-to-day business of keeping the convoys safe and the u-boats permanently underwater was the responsibility of the commander-in-chief coast of Ireland based in what was then called Queenstown and now called Cobb in Ireland itself this was in large part because it was the most geographically proximate Royal Navy base to the Western Approaches the section of the Atlantic that was so called because somewhat mundane Lee it was the part of the ocean that you sailed to to approach the UK coming from the West in World War one most German submarines lacked the range to get much further out into the Atlantic and then patrol effectively for an extended period of time and in any case the Western Approaches area offered the richest hunting grounds as ships concentrated in this area before heading to their various ports but shortly after World War one the majority of Ireland had become independent and the new Irish government was not especially keen on a large British naval base persisting on their soil thus responsibility for looking after the Western Approaches would have to allocated elsewhere at the start of World War two this fell to Admiral Martin Dunbar Naismith who happened to be commander-in-chief Plymouth given its proximity to the main route of shipping to both the UK's western coast and the channel through which convoys were still being run during World War two this made a certain amount of sense and add well done well Naismith had a good understanding of the hazards the merchants faced as he had spent much of his own career as a Submariner including a highly successful tour of the Black Sea against the Ottomans in World War one which had earned him the Victoria Cross as well as previously having taken the majority of the British government senior officials as well as the King on an underwater tour in an early submarine pre-world War one given the reliability of these early craft and that was something of a potentially history-changing escapade had anything gone wrong at the time this building was still under construction and so the Admiralty commandeered it modified it whilst it was being built to include a massive bunker underneath and would then take over the entire building for the duration of the war this would therefore be the new home of Western Approaches Command there's a number of reasons for this just down the road they're literally a two three-minute walk away is the Merseyside docks and we're going to go and have a look just before we go inside so a couple of minutes to walk away from Darby house is the Liverpool key site this was another reason for relocating Western Approaches to mark this area because see [Music] documents maybe some fight back in the day the exporter preparing the end sports amongst other things that would have been supplying so this is the entrance to Derby house back in the wall you would have to assign the Official Secrets Act to actually step across this threshold unless you voted short protein cells and I actually have signed the Official Secrets Act but that was several years ago unrelated reasons so we can now go inside regardless [Music] [Music] and like any good bunker and of course needed its own power supply you can see some nice big fuse breakers in the main power war just here these supply power to the bunker even if everything else outside might have been cut off we are now under the roof and the roof of our Buster spear is it seven foot thick so more than capable of resisting the odd German bomb especially considering we've got the bulk of darby house above us plus a little bit of ground as well having overseen the transfer from Plymouth to Liverpool Admiral Dunbar Naismith would hand over this element of command to Admiral Sir Percy noble a couple of weeks later whilst admiral noble was an officer with a distinctly above the surface pedigree he was nonetheless another capable choice and he promptly got to work reorganizing the convoy escort groups taking into account the new ships and technology that were becoming available and then absorbing the lessons that had been learned so far by the existing and new escort formations and turning them into new training methods and tactics that would lay the basis for future success along with enhancing a number of bases for the increasing number of escort craft ranging from Corvettes and the lend-lease destroyers all the way up to older battleships that were still in use to deter German surface raiders perhaps critical to the success of this new combined command noble was a very good to getting everyone to agree on a course of action via consensus which allowed the coordination of navy and air assets in a far superior manner that that displayed in some other joint commands at this time of the war the joint operation that was supposed to prevent the channel - in particular comes to mind with the Royal Navy in the world means in order to counter the u-boat Menace as many aircraft would be involved in this effort both in terms of hunting down new boats but also in providing search and rescue aircraft using the Sunderland flying boats as well as Catalina boats once they became available from the United States Western Approaches were not able to rain down quite as far and conduct a cold patrol as there would be in World War two so during World War one submarine campaign the most dangerous part approached the mentorship well there were a few submarines operating in the mid-atlantic was this area the sort of Western Approaches because shockingly enough they are way to approach United Kingdom if you're coming in from the West now in early night in early 1939 during the start of World War two Western Approaches demand was attached to commodity Plymouth which is down here this beta so now boys coming up this way just slip to either go to the UK's West Coast or to go up the channel as channel convoys were still very much a thing back there however the fall of France in 1940 meant that ships going up in this direction would be coming suicidally close to German air bases and potentially u-boat bases as well obviously with the Fallen issue from a lot more calm protected and so the convoys have to be rebooted but there's island picketing the way so Oh over through the top rim top pilot and down and this is where we are in Liverpool and so made a lot more sense a Western Approaches to be relocated to the port city where most of those convoys would be coming in and we're at course reports and intelligence could be gathered directly even whilst ships who might be damaged were being repaired now which I don't know stick long enough to code this board but you can see all the well above me the effect of the leaf on France actually have because if we pound it right you can see there's UK because you asked me most convoy routine coming up to stay as far away as possible from the fire bases and easy u-boat deployment from the coast of France as after all the type sevens like nines and on that you but reporting enough problems without providing additional tax officials around possibly both when possible if the old routine had been maintained now this is one of the regular brooms that was used to communicate both with London and the other military headquarters but also with the ships and escort groups that are out there we'll see a few of these other rooms elsewhere in the bunker but where it's nowadays we might have something along these lines a little bit of a mobile communications technology back then it was a little bit under another two bit more analogue you got switch phone this particular unit is directed to Ashford we've got our pulse radio and of course we have all our power monitoring and in just in case you've forgotten how it will work there are also some handy bits of paper on the walls that instructed you on how to repair and reset everything should something get knocked out of alignment a secondary reason for relocating the command Liverpool was that Liverpool was slightly less vulnerable to a low offer than Plymouth port Lillith obviously very close to occupied airfield in France and what's notable as you can see from these look for targeting maps was hardly immune to bombing to get to Liverpool Luftwaffe bombers had to come a lot further which make them more vulnerable as fighters escort would usually have to turn back before they got here and they must have to come across pretty much most of England and there was a rather angry group of RAF pilots defending it so bomber rates that reached here generally suffered more from the attentions of RAF fighters and night fighters which reduced the risk to this building and it's vital command staff just a little bit as much as any way in the UK was safe fish from the prophets attentions at the time but of course also under a bunker so just in case this is about the teleprinter room this is where a lot of messages would be econia more being masters control so you can see here we have a variety of instrumentation that will be used to decode messages both come in from flesh and bones and government from other aspects of the Royal Air Force and the world mainly but it's a direct transmission from the convoy escorts we're impossible now we're just going to go through this last window and look at some of the restaurant equipment here we see another part of the teleprinter - telecommunications room this is part of the exchange room and as you can see with the old school equipment and the old school switchboard this is where a lot of in communications will be coming in now although high powered radio sets were common in World War two and got increasingly more common as time went on the simple fact matter was one they still weren't ubiquitous and two they could be intercepted whereas a landline transmission is a lot harder to pick up if you happen to be in a German this thing posted in France and so these units there are four of them here and there elsewhere would be used to bring in most of the telecommunications though coming into the bunker and also to send orders out as much as possible to the main transmitting and encoding stations where these waters had to be transmitted out to sea so all of those rooms that we saw downstairs where and this is just putting down these stairs whereas in the teleprinter and telecommunications rooms most of the orders and messages would be received the most secret coded messages would be received in this small room here because they were so sensitive mostly signals intelligence from Bletchley Park the operator had actually locked in this room with an armed guard stationed outside you then had to wait for the riot e messages to arrive they would come in on the encoded strips which you can see on the left hand side just sticking out of the left-hand side machine and they would then have to be further decoded because of course once the German messages had been decoded they'd be rien coded under an allied cipher to be transmitted here so that nobody got any wind of the fact meaning the code had been broken we're now in one of two rooms that overlooked the main plotting room this cabin is for use by the Royal Navy and the one just next to it which we'll have a look at later is used by the Royal Air Force whilst all the reports and plot be kept alive by the various desks and phones out there here is where the officers of the Navy and Air Force would keep an eye on everything and then communicate any new findings that they needed to sense their various respective units without disrupting the work of the constant plotting the information here with MU relay upstairs to the radio room where which look out as well this work could be especially vital because if a u-boat was detected close enough then aircraft could be scrambled and intercept in any way near convoy as well as this this is where in early 1944 where despite the best efforts at was the new tactics developed air shipping losses from approaching that point that looked a tipping point becoming unsustainable the u-boats were just arriving in more and more numbers and their techniques and tactics were developing faster just a market count however April and May 1943 wouldn't indeed it proved to be a tipping point but not in the direction that it had looked like at the beginning of the year thanks in large part to the tactics and techniques developed here as well as the new technology and larger and the powerful force of escorts a number of convoys were attacked but the key tipping point was is generally helped to feed upon point lower than s5 whose room is what it just did Bowen s5 was a slow convoy that would end up being attacked by a combined force to cool the convoys Auburn had 22 merchant ships so there are actually boats available there were merchant ship to sink all being that combined we're tuning that's actually very versatile there at once and you need something which is too far around the convoy just over a dozen escorts for it since five same period just over half a dozen any given time which member the vessel were actually available to come in however whilst it shouldn't finish water and indeed 13 of the merchant vessels were lost the Huber arm took equal losses six u-boats the sunk outright and another settlement was so badly damaged that they have to retreat back to France or a debt with a number of them being intercepted by other assets on route with a few more being sunk as a result training the vessel the vessel was completely unsustainable but a breach Nina especially since the Liberty ships and victory ships were coming down the staircase to pasta a German degrees like new boats to say nothing of the loss of the trained and skilled view boat crews that were going down every time when you both destroyed also available in 1943 were large numbers of new purpose-built escorts that have been diverted off to the invasion think that taken part in Operation Torch in late 1942 this flood of new craft along with other advancements such as centimetric radar airborne surface search radar that was fine enough to pick up the u-boat periscope as well as radar guided searchlights all contributed to all facts being driven from the seas by the middle of 1943 a massive train and whatever look like as late as March 1943 when he was thought that Britain might just be brought to its knees by the leadership or being Sun Also thrown into the fight in this period were increasing numbers of merchant aircraft carriers which were merchants homes that have a simple flight deck installed as well as purpose-built escort carriers emotionally coming down on the slipway from American shipyards and the port air you can see here vast numbers of different types of aircraft being used you've got Wellington's Halifax and supplements seat fires both of its and as well as Catalina's now all of these aircraft have been in service in one way shape or form number of years but key to closing the mid-atlantic gap which was an area surprising them in the ante where couldn't quite reach was the aircraft whose symbol of white terror the b-24 liberator it would be actually submarine versions of this airport deployed in increasing numbers again in the United States as well as allocated to RAF Coastal Command then we close this gap and present the significant problem the u-boats who it was to use this area as a relatively safe place to serve this and reach their batteries as well as making radio reports back to pigs arena headquarters that wasn't the end of the threat entirely however new technologies and tactics will constantly being developed by the Germans as well with zigzagging torpedoes acoustic wait homing torpedoes and improved types of u-boats in clean water and electric boats all coming into service as well as flak boats that were designed to engage very pesky Allied aircraft that were being coordinated from this facility as well but Western Approaches Command and the Western Approaches tactical unit upstairs will be proved to be more than equal to the task a German attempt revived their general offensive in late 1943 led to the loss of over three dozen new boats for minimal losses to merchant ships this was the first time that the escorts have managed to trade u-boats for merchant ships at a better a one-to-one ratio which was something that pleased the officers men Ren's a scientist station no end they would even managed to develop countermeasures to the acoustic homing torpedoes the Germans have developed which would allow escorts to relatively reliably invade into these weapons thus obviating most of the points of deployment which had been to kill the escorts in the first place thus making easier the rest of the convoy to be attacked by more conventional weapons and this was all prior to the introduction of things like noisemakers and toad decoys having overseen the transfer of command concluded to Liverpool at Mall Dunbar naismith then handed over command to at mercy Noble however in 1942 admiral noble was written in turn replaced by Appleton max Horton like Admiral Dunbar naismith Horton had enjoyed a highly successful career as a Submariner in World War one albeit he'd gone on to command a series of surface ships in the interwar period and then gone back to his roots spending the first few years of World War two as a Rear Admiral of submarines during this period he had submitted and seen through the concept of the convoy rescue ship this took a small but for a merchant relatively fast ship usually a freighter that already had some passenger carrying capability and enhanced this as well as the onboard food storage and preparation facilities as well as installing medical facilities the ships boats were replaced with larger ones that were more suited to work in open seas as well as large nets for men to climb aboard when these were deployed over the sides of the hull and these were pre-installed in ready launch positions in this manner around 150 men could be accommodated in addition to the ship's crew and the use of the smaller vessels meant that they were less likely to be targeted when a u-boat had a range of options to choose from such as large freighters and tankers now pointed as the commander in chief of Western Approaches Command they were further further series of evolutions in the way the escort ships were going to be used in part dictated by the rising numbers of available ships and their improved technological capabilities and in part due to the continuing work of the Western Approaches tactical unit which we'll come to later bear in mind Horton was a very effective submarine commander but in war games the new tactics that developed by the Rennes of watu managed to sink a u-boat that was under his control with alarming regularity one of the changes that they introduced was the introduction of support groups whereas the normal escort groups were tied to convoys support groups would travel with a convoy that was deemed to be increased risk but would normally be made of slightly swifter vessels than the Corvettes and other convoy bound escorts these would have the authority to leave the convoys to continue the pursuit of detected submarines for as long as was needed this it should be noted was partly as a result of Hortons experience allowing him to think in the role of both escort and submarine captain at the same time but also thanks to the increase in escort numbers and critically in the numbers of faster and more capable escorts such as the hunt class whilst much of this activity would take place above ground in Darby house the heart of the day-to-day operations and indeed night to night operations took place underground in the bunker as well as being airtight the massive construction of the bunker allowed the men and women of Western Approaches Command to work on it through any Luftwaffe raids without much fear of being hit it's largely thanks to this massive construction that we still have the museum as the central core of the bunker network proved far too costly and difficult to demolish post-war which allowed it to survive long enough for people to take an interest in to turning it into a museum even though only a small part of the original complex is actually open to visitors this is the Western Approaches for most of the period as we've mentioned this was max Horton and as you can see there's some holes on the table because he was an avid golfer there's also some golf clubs over there in the corner that's another matter he of course has his telephones man his can switch board of his own his bunk is just behind us out there and he has a study through their unit here and as you can see if we pan over to the to do the right he has a direct overview of the command center this was critical as a bull Horton would spend a good few years of his life here literally sleeping ten feet ahead of me behind the camera coming into here and observing the convoys and the battles that went on constantly this was a very key feature of the bunker because you've got to remember that whilst a lot of the intelligence and that what general work would be done through the day a lot of the convoy battles themselves would take place that night and so since the Kriegsmarine a-- didn't go off work at five o'clock in the afternoon it was by Klee important that the key minds behind the anti-submarine effort would be able to be in contact and direct the battle as much as they could at least from over here in Liverpool at any time of day so this was an important sleeping quarters and as conceived just have a bed wash basin another tough home just in case the one that's just over there wasn't close enough but this was very austere don't a slight upgrade over what everybody else had this is a typical accommodation room for the wrens who formed most of the staff here at Western Approaches Command as you can see exactly the same kind of bed design that mal Horton had it's just bunk bed so there's two of them and a slightly smaller room same Stata military-issue washbasin get on the phone as well this area is again off-limits to the public in general and this is more of the accommodation quarters just around the corner from the accommodation quarters we just have a look at this will eventually become part of a train museum commemorating their efforts in the war but as you can see has only just been reopened and there's all Tim bars and few other bits and pieces but not a lot of interest at the minute now this is a relatively unremarkable exit passageway also might appear you see one of the things that isn't on this museum tour is the rifle range but a lot of the Reds who served here went interview mention the rival arranged quite a bit now you might think where is that local Rangers well we don't know yet but there is one clue you see here's the floor but stop here it's pretty solid now actually take a couple steps over here it's hollow so there's something under here now that is something for future exploration now I've made mention of the wrens and the Western Approaches tactical command unit or yeah - and you might thought oh I'm not gonna mention them much further well you'd be wrong this is all about them one of the key aspects to Admiral Nobles tenure was the introduction of the Western Approaches tactical unit or wha - in January 1942 they were created specifically to analyze the way current battles against the u-boats were being fought and then develop and distribute new ideas and methods to better counteract German efforts against the precious convoys now what who was assigned most of the top floor of Derby house but sadly that since been converted to offices and we can only tell you the story and not show it the Royal Navy had entered World War two assuming or perhaps hoping would be more accurate that u-boat tactics would be similar to those seen at the end of World War one they developed what they called as dick and we now call sonar in order to counter submarines and some thought this invention would obviate the risk from submarine attack as long as merchant ships were confined to calm boys however others especially those who'd conducted exercises with the Royal Navy's own submarines were somewhat more skeptical of this and indeed the new German u-boat fleet had improved its technology and adapted its tactics in anticipation of having to attack convoys in particular they developed the Wolfpack tactic this had first been tried in late World War one but had proved so disastrous that the Royal Navy hadn't actually even noticed and the high seas fleet had abandoned it into war exercises had improved the idea significantly though and despite some false starts it was well in effect shortly after the start of World War two from signals intelligence in part related to to efforts against enigma the British knew you boats were operating in a coordinated fashion but not exactly what this entails now contrary to popular myth a Wolfpack generally did not involve a formation of u-boats cruising on masts against a convoy apart from anything else that would be a recipe for friendly fire and heavy losses in most cases instead a pack would be deployed in a patrol line across the expected route of a convoy when one submarine spotted the convoy the others would then be directed to join the attack thus the number of submarines in range and when they arrived would vary this was actually far more taxing on the escorts as a single large set-piece engagement would be hard but manageable for a decent sized escort group but constant single attacks on different vectors at day and night for days at a time could wear down even the most hardened escort crews and cause mistakes to be made through sheer fatigue if nothing else but a submarine underwater was still slower than a convoy so the submarines must have some constraints on how when and where they could attack from in order to work out how this will worked reverse-engineer the tactics and thus devise countermeasures in early 1942 the watu was formed under commander gilbert roberts and assigned to darby house a largely staffed from the women's Royal Naval Service or Rennes they used a literal tabletop or rather floor level wargaming to counter the Kriegsmarine as u-boats the war games were conducted on the top floor of Derby house using a large brown lino floor of the game board they grid net' 10 inches of square to one mile would be drawn out and various models signifying a service to votes and service ships would be placed the courses of the u-boat would be plotted but in a green in chalk that was very difficult to see when viewed from an angle the Reds and if necessary officers who were commanding the question of escort ships would only be able to see the board using these these canvas screens would block their ability to actually see the board in general although those commanding that you both could see the entire board if an escort wanted to have a look they'd have to have a look through one of these tiny little two inch slits like this and trust me that view is very restricted there's also this removable red film to simulate nighttime conditions now this you could say gave something of an unfair advantage to a u-boat operator because the u-boat commander at least in simulation could see everything was going on whereas the escorts could only have this limited view the limited view was fairly realistic because obviously on an escort you can only see a bit apart the ocean but the idea was that he attacked it could be developed that could defeat someone who was commanding the u-boat who could literally see anything who is using - an octagon then surely the tactic would work a lot better against a u-boat commander who was more limited by the bounds of reality but how exactly does one defeat the single greatest threat to the UK's existence with some model ships and a grid square board first the team reviewed the various encounter and battle reports that had come in from the escorting ships that arrived in the UK second using these reports they recreated the actions as best they could using known performance specifications of German u-boats they would then be able to extrapolate what the Germans were doing to show up in the locations and at the times that were recorded by the escorts thirdly having reverse engineered the particular encounter they would play out new battles using the tactics that they derived only now with the ability to anticipate what might happen and thus devise countermeasures forth once the countermeasures had been played out and proven successful repeatedly in exercise you would disseminate these tactics to the escort ship commanders for use in the future this had a number of advantages the actions could be play out again and again without putting any lives at risk increasing the number of passes at working out what the escort should ideally be doing and also because this was a war game it was possible to stop analyze and think repeatedly if needed without the concerns of ongoing attacks whether rescue efforts and the like the operational ships would have to concern themselves with once a successful countermeasure was worked out serving officers would be invited to take part in the war games to help them both understand what the enemy was doing and what they could do about it British officers made up most of these trainees but serving officers from almost every other allied Navy would also take part with the notable exception of the US Navy as Admiral King barred his officers from formally learning anything from the Royal Navy when it came to this field of operations that didn't however stop a number of enterprising u.s. officers turning up on Sunday when ostensibly everybody was off work in order to pick up a few tips and tricks the war games themselves were based on a rule set which was the original purpose behind the publication of Jane's fighting ships and in many ways the first versions of this publication could very much be seen as a codex real-world Navy and with an ever-changing rule set as well as expansions and discontinued units courtesy of the various naval powers two of the biggest successes to come out of the department were the raspberry and beta search techniques the first came about the reverse-engineering house submarine could sink a ship in the middle of a convoy without being noticed and by strictly adhering to rules laid down by operational requirements it was discovered that the only way that this could happen was by a submarine running on the surface at night coming in from the rear of the convoy torpedoing its target and then submerging and falling back this was required due to the fact that slow as a convoy normally was a submerged u-boat was even slower and the flanks in front of a convoy were usually far more heavily guarded whereas the rear was rarely checked this allowed the submarine to potentially reload and come back for another go again and again until it ran out of torpedoes or targets with this realization escorts were ordered to drop back and form a line behind the convoy if a ship in the middle randomly exploded at night and they were then run search patterns waiting for the submarine to drop back out of the convoy underwater and depth charge it from an unexpected direction sure enough a steady string of u-boat kills began to accrue from this method the other tactic was called beta search this was devised after an interview with a captain of HMS Harvester who had noticed that some u-boats would be seen hovering ahead of a convoy reporting its position sometime thereafter a signal would be detected nearby almost certainly a sighting report from a submarine that was about to engage the initial instinct upon detecting a u-boat was to charge it down and do everything possible to kill it the submarine would then try to evade of course and could be successful in this as escorts couldn't stray too far away from the convoy a risk of another u-boat slipping through a gap in the defense's so all the submarine had to do was to stay ahead of the depth charges long enough for the escort to be forced to break off or better still just evade but if the sub evaded early it would try and sidle around the convoy to attack from astern thus instead an escort would charge the u-boat but not attempt immediate engagement the submarines captain would instinctively order his ship to dive seeing an escort charging at him and the escort would then sail past convincing the u-boat crew that they'd managed to dive early enough to evade discovery underwater it would then predictably try to sneak around the side of the convoy but as it drew closer the noise of the convoy propellers would be very loud this would mask the true intent of the other escorts which would be quietly making their way to the same estimated location and then all of a sudden depth charges and as dick would be launched and the first thing that you boat you was the world was exploding around it other tactics were also calculated as German responses to these were analyzed most were code name for fruit pineapple for instance was designed to deal with situations where there really were a group of u-boats lying in wait ahead this involved the escorts charging out at full speed forcing the submarines to dive the more cautious would then break off and just be passed by whilst the more cunning it would take advantage of the escorts high-speed to simply move past them while speed interfered with Aztec systems resolution but the second part of the tactic was for a number of escorts to double back once the subs were known to have dived and couldn't see them and then quietly work their own way back towards the convoy ready to jump onto any azdak contact that appeared from a sneaky u-boat and it must be remembered that the vast majority of this work was done by the Ren's who not only had never been to sea in a submarine before but indeed at the time could not go to sea in a submarine before it gives you some idea of just how effective both the operational method that they used was and just how smart these women were in that they managed to reverse-engineer the tactics of a very experienced Kriegsmarine a submarine commanders and then develop counter tactics that would prove to be highly effective as we said despite never actually going aboard or in some cases even seeing a submarine and so to wrap things up I thought it would be a good idea to have a chat with the director of the museum both about Western Approaches command in the war as well as how it became a museum and what the future holds for it if I don't think of approaches his tongue and thank you for sharing your time with us today now obviously this was a bunker this was used as a command centre and then for a very long period of time it wasn't it was shut down just after the war it was found bit too difficult to demolish because they may be bomb proof so when did he come back into being a museum as it is now so there's some other story we know some of the stories got gaps in but we're still trying to fill so we know they're in the 1945 officially the building was boarded up and it went back into private ownership so effectively Darley house exchanged flags was in private ownership but was commandeered by the Admiralty during the war so went back into private ownership this specific areas bunker was was boarded brick door everything was removed all the paperwork was removed anyway we know then it was rediscovered in very late 80s early 90s by a new landlord who bought the building who had a bit of a pawn Shawn for the Second World War so when he knocked through at the school at this this room obviously the the top of Darby house top floors that it was known that they were naval officers during the war but when this was discovered this they had this bunker he he went about making plans to open it to the public unfortunately he was a character is probably the best description of this landlord he went bust in the end and this was it was forcibly it had to be sold so the museum kind of closed the game a new Lionel had brought the building in 2017 big heritage which is the social enterprise that runs west approaches which I founded we took on that lease about two and a half years we've had it and about thirty to forty thousand visitors a year so it's growing steadily we do have some gaps in that story so in between obviously nineteen for survivor and 1889 apparently not that was happening but we've found certainly higher for some paperwork into the 50s into the early sixties actually and we suspect like another couple of kind of Second World War fortified bunker sites that they were kept up to some extent with the threat of the Cold War some of these were kind of kept in some running condition if you like just in case there was any further war which obviously didn't happen so we do wonder where many although Official Secrets Act kind of end approaches so we see what this has been restored by the turning point of the Atlantic trait there there any other interest in bits and pieces of history of the bunker or history but for the Atlantic that you might not show us yeah well it's an interesting place so obviously we got a set of keys effectively in 2017 and a plan a set of building plans that were written off in 1990 as an archaeologist and most our team are kind of historians are archeologists we don't really settle on the I'm just that you know what's in front to you so we went and booking their own research and found 1942 plans for the bunker which suggested that was more rooms more space than there were on the nineties plans we have these code they gaps that were missing so we actually discovered was about 20% more to the building and more rooms than we we designed at least four so it's quite exciting sort of am only just kind of opening was about half that lead from asbestos but we have a room that was directly linked in to Bletchley Park so it was a decoding room if you think of Bletchley Park deciphering the Enigma and getting these messages then translate them from germs we English they'd have to scramble them again to send them to to this room here basically so all of our information from actually was was that work was he's important but the data information was being used here so we have a room to show which was directly reflected it was only opened a few months ago really for the film open to the public so we can show you that but the whole whole whole places at Canada hidden hidden Jeremy keep finding things and the social history for me is the interesting bit about Western Approaches so it's not about the big battles per se or the different strategies it's finding little notes of people it's finding sweet wrappers down the sides of radiators that have been there since the forties we found a scroll of telegram which fold in it said I just like to let you know that you are a complete bastard obviously sends a bit of a falling joke a telegram throwing it away and forgotten about 70 odd years later we find the downside of the radiator so from grander stories of hidden rooms through to offensive messages so when we talk over the bill in this room was closed off there was a wall way along here on our plans that was just the corridor leading to the room through there but then when we just got these plans of 1942 this Road route was a decoding room and then a few starts to come into place so if you look in the room where we have the most coefficients now they have the same tubes going along with the same equally spaced uprights now what they are in the room is they are stations for maps where careful apps have come out there'd be a desk among the machines were placed on so we saw this Colorado hang on a second there's no way you'd have desks in a room miss Merrow and so ended up taking this wall down sorry from the plans we discovered that was a wider room took this wall we hold you can see that's the rest of their the death Said's either laps coming down what's fantastic is its pristine paint color so we've got the original core so in the 1990s when they opened the museum that the lab Melbourne was a bit was a lot of pastiche kind of kind of making things up as they went along and the pink colors and everything world all over the place so what is great for us was the finest original you know because they obviously the map here permanently Vivaldi's before they put on some scribbled map so they go back to the maps gonna go so and there's cable tunnels that you can see and these straight onto the street linked up straight directly not sure how the technologies behind it but this is one of the rooms directly linked to what Whitehall and Bletchley Park so it's art attention this is our next project now to get this back and restored as it was you think that the messages that came through here like it's kind of still put shivers down me to work everyday you think you what tation game actually for all the great work they did the crux of it the information they have the big decisions were made in this yes like you did with this British developer moves Millman break the Athens Games ever had to be honest what's amazing at the other look at this the camera we pulled this away they're doing so we found cigarette wrappers and everything can you see there's like a chicken why yeah so it's a Faraday cage the whole room is that a giant Faraday cage of what that meant what prevented was interference from radio or from anything beat you out as well so this we've described this in a few of the rooms now or basically we found the walls that I've got in a copper line in around women we've kind of realized that a lot of it was around keeping the either in ruse with the feeling each other or stopping them going or being intercepted [Music] we have got actual strip of this here in in a couple of storms that we can't reuse we're going to actually cut a couple of these out out and create some really fancy lamps and I think that'd be very very sort of but yet working for saying these clean of asbestos thousands to do that we're going to get one work and I think eventually is the sound that was amazing clicking away we've met bikes then we worked out what this was off plans and photographs what's in here again we cleaned all this best out of it that's it's a whopper of a job to get this all or restored but this was again this is another room this wasn't on our plans we were so yeah in fact the last visitor who came in here was Willie Johnson who was the United States ambassador so he come to visit Liverpool wants to go in as a it was family of a history with lend-lease program it's actually kind of come to pay pilgrimage you feel like a Western Approaches the gentleman who's a absolute look at the place and he said about this fruited it understand why you're storing it we said it's almost a shame because it's nice for visitors to kind of if you get a secret viewing behind the scenes it's it's like something special and awesome so you know restoring everything kind of Blues is up I mean that mystique to it but we're sure there's plenty more space [Music] we've got reams of paper actually said to one of the staff we should probably capitalize on some of that start printing letters or to people we can buy up a letter pi room the original paper from Western Approaches it's on every dispatches yeah I'm sure there's probably all sorts of just mom dating rubbish getting printed as well once you out of the bunker into daylight you might be seen a bit like this now of course this isn't actually about recreated their course rationing in effect some fresh fruit that might come straight out but these local fields would still be here obviously and of course propaganda posters all over the place there was a portal so collection feel scraps but pigswill the sweet shop over there and if you were really unlucky you might wake up one morning these waiting for you this particular one is a thousand-pound german bomb obviously not exploded and I'm not going to give it a kick in any case and this we've been the typical site that migrated an officer or a REM when they came up from the bunker to see daylight for the first time possibly in weeks and that concludes this brief history of Western Approaches Command and our tour of the facility at least this time around now as with many UK museums that have suffered under the lockdown they have been closed for a number of months but they are aiming to reopen in late July or early August so if you happen to be in the UK or visiting the UK and are within reasonable distance of Liverpool keep an eye on their website link in the description down below and as and when they're reopened I strongly advise you to go and give them a little bit of support have a look around the museum and see what you can see there's certainly a lot more interesting history to learn and although this video's approaching an hour you could spend quite easily two to three hours or more looking through the museum and reading up on even more of the vital work that the men and women of Western Approaches command did and who knows that I even have found a few more secret chambers like the rifle range by then that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for drydock questions can't Ronan so the building is six four claws tall generally and you can just see there that little off-kilter bit is an additional section that goes even further up the Western Approaches tactical unit when the construction is finished the building as a whole is about six floors tall and not including anything underground really yes apparently you oh wow he's a nice truck he goes down foster so the entire building is about six floors high that's not including the underground sections obviously and that

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 97,584

Rating: 4.9100571 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, World War 2, Royal Navy, Battle of the Atlantic, Liverpool, Derby House, Wren, WATU, Admiral Horton, Admiral Dunbar Naismith, Admiral North

Id: mU08NA6iUYQ

Length: 56min 31sec (3391 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/INITMalcanis]

Drach's channel is a treasure trove of naval and ship lore. Highly recommended.

[u/pier4r]

Why I find it interesting:

• it shows the western approaches command (mostly a bunker), how they are recovering it and how in the past wargames (mostly conducted with the help of women) were useful to reverse engineer german submarine tactics and find very effective counters to them.