Watch Office And Operations Room At Alconbury Airfield

ALCONBURY

49/0/10003 Watch Office and Operations Room at 10-OCT-02 Alconbury Airfield

II

Watch office with Operations Room. 1941. Watch office built to Air Ministry Directorate of Works and Buildings drawing no. 7345/41, and extended with operations room to drawing no. 13079/41. Rendered brick with corrugated iron and asbestos roofs. First phase comprised a single-storey watch office to NE, then room for teleprinters etc followed by operations room and kitchen/WC at SW end. The operations room was then extended upwards with the addition of an airfield observation room and extended to the SW with a crew briefing room in the form of a Nissen hut. Steel casement windows. Flight of steel stairs provides access to first-floor door to observation room and to observation area above, surrounded by steel railings.

RAF Alconbury was operational as a satellite bomber station in September 1940. It was handed over to the American Eight Air Force in 1942, who immediately set about extending the runways to facilitate the use of four-engined bombers. Alconbury continued to have an American prescence until 1993, when the base closed. This control tower with attached operations room is the best-preserved example of a standard type built for bomber satellite stations during the Second World War. Control towers comprise the most architecturally distinctive and identifiable examples of the standard building types built on military airfields during the Second World War, 214 being built.