The Royal Observer Corps (ROC) was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain.
The Royal Observer Corps Monitoring Posts are underground structures all over the United Kingdom, constructed as a result of the Corps’ nuclear reporting role and operated by volunteers during the Cold War, until 1991.
The 29 hidden nuclear bunkers, built in 1960, were designed to withstand an atomic blast and monitor the aftermath of such an attack.
According to official ROC documentation, a team of three would be expected to live underground in the event of a ‘nuclear incident’, providing reports on the levels of radioactivity in the area.
The Royal Observer Corps was a civil defence organisation intended for the visual detection, identification, tracking and reporting of aircraft over Great Britain. (Above, a decommissioned ROC monitoring post in the East Midlands in 2003)
In their prime, 12 of the 29 ROC HQs had fully underground bunkers with dormitories, a canteen, communications, plant, control and generator rooms, toilets, air filtering and a decontamination room.
The rest had a surface bunker, with walls made of metre-thick reinforced concrete which could withstand what the military called a ‘near miss’: a two-megaton bomb falling eight miles away.
Along with hundreds of tiny underground monitoring posts big enough for just three people, they would have plotted nuclear fallout and new blasts, sending their findings through secure phone lines to civil servants in 11 subterranean regional outposts.
Almost half of the 29 ROC headquarters have been demolished since closing down.
The HQs were part of a larger, complex network which also included 11 regional seats of government, two of which have been restored, and hundreds of tiny monitoring posts.