Buildings 25 (Watch Office), 22 (Fire Tender Shelter) And 24 (Floodlight Trailer And Tractor)

Air traffic control group at Dunkeswell Airfield, comprising the Watch Office (Building 25), Fire Tender Shelter (Building 22), and Floodlight Trailer and Tractor Shed (Building 24). Built in 1943 for the Air Ministry.

The Control Tower (Building 25) is a 2-storey structure of rendered brick or blockwork with a reinforced concrete roof. It follows Air Ministry Directorate of Works and Buildings drawing no. 343/43, a standardised design of which 162 examples were constructed across all Commands; 82 survive today, including examples at Duxford. The ground floor contained a watch office, meteorological office, pilots' office, switch room and toilet. The first floor housed the control room and signals office, with a rest room above that accessed an external balcony and roof deck. A cantilevered balcony runs the full width of the front elevation, returning approximately 2 metres on each side. To the left, a steel gangway rises to the roof deck. Both the balcony and roof deck are protected by steel-pipe handrails. The principal elevation facing the flying field has 3 windows; these were originally standard steel casements with horizontal bars but are currently boarded up. The interior retains original doors and joinery, including concrete dog-leg stairs.

Buildings 22 and 24, positioned to the north and north-west, are rectilinear structures with rendered brick or blockwork walls and corrugated asbestos-cement roofs on steel trusses. Both feature bold projecting buttresses to each side and end, rising to eaves height, with gable-end doorways.

The survival of this complete grouping—including the Watch Office, Fire Tender Shelter, Floodlight Trailer and Tractor Shed, Signals Square and Airfield Code letters—is rare and characteristic of Second World War airfield layouts. Its preservation alongside a well-conserved airfield landscape of the period, still in active use for flying, is unique.

Dunkeswell is the only British airfield where the US Navy Fleet Air Wing, whose primary theatre of operations was the Pacific, was based during the Second World War. It represents the best-preserved of all west-country sites associated with the strategically vital Battle of the Atlantic. The airfield began construction in 1941 by contractor George Wimpey. It was transferred to 19 Group Coastal Command in May 1942, then occupied in August 1942 by the US Air Force Anti-Submarine Group 479, following high-level British-American liaison to establish reinforcements and neutralise the U-boat threat as a precondition to the invasion of north-west Europe.

Prior to its establishment at Dunkeswell, the US Navy had protected shipping off the eastern seaboard of North America, then Iceland and Greenland. At Dunkeswell, their task was to patrol sea areas between German U-boat bases in France and their hunting grounds in the North Atlantic. US Navy Fleet Air Wing 7 remained until operations ended in May 1945. During this period, 6,424 anti-submarine missions were flown from the airfield, principally in B24 Liberator bombers, which possessed the greatest range over the Atlantic of any aircraft then available. US Navy liaison personnel were based at Coastal Command headquarters at Mount Wise, Plymouth, where Enigma decrypts from Bletchley Park were planned and forwarded for action. At peak operations in 1944, just under 5,000 personnel were stationed at Dunkeswell. The RAF took over in August 1945, using the base for ferrying and maintenance until departing in 1949.

During the Second World War, Britain's airfield total expanded from 158 to 740, encompassing requisitioned civil fields, emergency landing grounds, and purpose-built bases ranging from fighter stations to bomber and Advanced Landing Ground facilities. Among all surviving wartime airfields, none has been preserved in as good a condition as Dunkeswell's landscape and associated control tower group, operations area and technical site. The base's airfield is documented in remarkable film archive material. At its peak, the base housed over 2,000 personnel dispersed across multiple sites.

Dunkeswell possesses strong associations with key events of the Second World War. Shore-based aircraft cover proved decisive in the Battle of the Atlantic, supplemented by Ultra decryption from Bletchley Park and radar development. The Atlantic Gap, beyond the reach of land-based air cover, was the primary U-boat hunting ground, driving the establishment of bases in Iceland, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and later Greenland. Shore-based aircraft operating from bases such as Dunkeswell accounted for 41.5 per cent of U-boat kills. Aircraft capability evolved significantly: the 500-mile range of Hudson, Wellington and Whitley bombers was extended to 600 miles by the Sunderland flying boat and to 1,100 miles by the Liberator (in service from 1943, the aircraft used at Dunkeswell). May 1943 is acknowledged as the turning point in the conflict, when shore and ship-based aircraft accounted for two-thirds of U-boat losses. Although U-boat pen construction began at St Nazaire, Lorient, Le Palice and Brest in January 1941, the War Cabinet did not order Bomber Command to attack these bases until December 1943. From that date, air power assumed an increasingly strategic role in preparation for Operation Overlord.

Building 68, a T-type hangar, is the best-preserved example on the site, prominently located near the control tower group and operations block, adjacent to two well-preserved American prefabricated workshop buildings. To the north, many technical site buildings survive, though most are in highly adapted states.