Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker
Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker
Welcome to one of the nations most secret defense sites. Hack Green has played a central role in the defence of Britain for almost sixty years. As you approach Hack Green over the picturesque farmland and rolling Cheshire countryside, it’s hard to imagine a more peaceful location, but it was not always like this!
Over 50 years ago the freedom you now enjoy was in peril, World War II was being lost and Britain was struggling for its very survival. In the Air Ministry in bomb-blitzed London officials were looking for sites to locate the new Radio Detection and Direction Finding (RDF) equipment or radar as it came to be known. A chain of radar stations were already strung out along the eastern and southern coasts to face the enemy bombers and fighters threatening Britain. This system was known as ‘Chain Home’ and was supplemented at the outbreak of war by the ‘Chain Home Low’ system which was able to detect enemy aircraft flying at low altitude.
The height of the cold war a key part of Britain’s nuclear preparedness and capability was the WE 177 free fall nuclear weapon and Submarine launched Polaris Missile system. If there had been a nuclear attack on the UK, incoming missile maps would come alive, and time to impact displays would flash the deadly countdown to our nuclear Armageddon. Attack-warning sirens would sound throughout the UK. This would be followed by a fail-safe command system, which would ultimately end in the executive coded order being given by the Prime Minister to launch a retaliatory attack. Incidentally you can see the equipment used by the Prime Minister to transmit the launch orders at the bunker at Hack Green. Our Polaris submarines would fire their missiles.
Missile4The V-Force strike bombers would fly at supersonic speed to deliver the deadly WE 177 nuclear weapons to our enemies. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the cold war ended. 1999 saw the WE 177-weapon system de-commissioned, with the Polaris system now up-dated to the new Trident multiple warhead system, in order to maintain our readiness for an attack. The WE 177 weapons and the first generation of multiple warhead missiles “Project Chevaline”, that had served so well at the forefront of the defence of Britain had gone forever. Gone but not forgotten! Determined to save this vital link with Britains nuclear past Rodney Siebert the curator at Hack Green Secret Nuclear Bunker in Nantwich Cheshire began a project that led to these vital pieces of recent history being saved for the nation. The true story of Britain’s readiness for nuclear war could at last be told.
The WE 177 nuclear weapons were dismantled, and in the darkness of the missile bunkers lay a cold war time warp.
The nations nuclear defence frozen in time, when the nuclear clock stopped ticking and our nuclear weapons starting to gather dust.