Below the site of RAF Daws Hill lies a three-storey top secret wartime bunker codenamed ‘Pinetree’, constructed in 1942 at a cost of £250,000 to provide headquarters for the Bomber Command of the US Army Air Force (USAAF).
It was reinforced by a ten-foot-thick concrete ceiling and five-foot thick side walls, with a void between that and another six feet of reinforced concrete, designed to withstand any explosion.
Why? Because the bunker was used to coordinate the USAAF’s bombing campaigns across Europe during World War II.
It was renovated during the Cold War in the 1950s to be used by the US government as the primary European centre for organising possible nuclear attacks. Had war broken out between the Soviet Union and the West, the command to strike would have been launched from High Wycombe. The site also became a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), accessible only by Presidents and personnel with the highest level of clearance.
The bunker was refurbished again in the 1980s against nuclear, chemical or biological attack, adding a decontamination.
Pinetree was deactivated in 1993 and in October 2013 the site was awarded Grade II* listing. Unfortunately, the site is closed off from public access, although Subterranea Brittanica were able to organise a tour in 2018. Wycombe resident Ed Silvester was among the lucky few to visit. He described the smell of damp, the enormous blast doors and airlock to pass inside, and the incredible engineering of the structure – made to measure and clearly American by design, down to the typeface and buttons. He said the interior felt “like a submarine”, and the ceilings were low. While those within would have felt far safer than others, it was by no means comfortable.
NB In the last issue, where we described how many Wycombe residents hail from St Vincent, we should clarify they were British subjects recruited to address post-war labour shortages.
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