Built during the Second World War, this control bunker is where a crew would have operated a wider decoy formation across the Cliffe Marshes. It was designed to simulate a burning airfield and deceive Luftwaffe bombers that their target had already been attacked, potentially drawing fire upon the decoy and the brave crew which would have used this hardened control building as an air raid shelter.
The decoy served RAF Gravesend which opened prior to wartime in 1932, but came into its own during the Second World War. To help protect the airfield, a bombing decoy was constructed on the Kent marshes which simulated a runway at night, so when it became apparent that enemy aircraft were heading towards London or industry at the Isle of Grain which might also incur an attack on RAF Gravesend, fuel could be pumped through pipes into the fields and set on fire. With most decoy formations, only the control bunker survives given that the rest of the decoy was much more temporary in nature. At Cliffe, the surface-level decoy building remains today, where the decoy would have been activated and controlled from. The design for this type of bunker was first issued in September 1941, so the remains at Cliffe are thought to have been built just after that.
We visited the control bunker in June 2021. The bunker consists of two small rooms, accessed by a small corridor. One of the rooms has an escape hatch in the roof which would have had a ladder for the crew to escape, in case the main entrance was obstructed. The other room appears to be a generator room with a concrete base and holes in the wall for ventilation and piping.
Below is our video footage of the decoy control bunker from our 2021 visit.
This document from The National Archives provides contemporary mapping of the control bunker amongst the wider decoy formation and details of its operation during an air raid.
Source: Heritage Gateway