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The
bunker was built in 1938 - 1939 at what was Kenton Quarry,
and under the Dowding System of air defence became the headquarters
of No 13 Group Fighter Command, which stretched from Humberside
to The north of Scotland, including Northern Ireland.
Commanded
by Air Vice-Marshal Richard Saul, the bunker was a typical
MOD design of the time, with everything centred around a one
storey high operations room complete with curved glass observation
posts above a plotting table. There was also a plant room
that enabled the circulating air to be filtered, and indeed
the ventilation system is still intact.
The
bunkers' day in history came on the 15th August 1940 when
around midday the controller sitting high above the plotting
table realised that the north east coast was under attack
by a calvacade of German fighter bombers from Luftflotte 5.
Scrambling fighters from sector airfields around the North
east and further afield, the Germans were sufficiently repulsed
and never mounted a daylight attack again over the north east.
Around
the end of 1940, bunkers known as Group Filter Rooms were
built near each Group HQ bunker to filter out the important
information. So the site at Kenton Bar had a sister bunker
built (of different layout) at what are now the Blakelaw flats
just off Blakelaw Road. The Filter bunker now houses the local
Sea Scouts and was thought for many years to be the 13 Group
HQ.
When
the decision was taken to build the filter bunker, the area
that 13 Group covered was reduced, and No 14 Group was formed
at Inverness to cover the area north of Montrose. In 1943,
the bunker was decommissioned as 13 Group HQ, with No 12 Group
taking over resonsibility for the area. For the rest of the
war it was used for teleprinter and communications work.
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