Building 210, nicknamed Magic Mountain, at RAF Alconbury was a very short lived but expensive item. Completed by 1988 and closed by 1993, due to the USAF leaving the site, it is now awaiting a new use. This may present problems due to the restrictions on its use, from the planning standpoint, and the difficulty of demolishing such a structure anyway. This bunker is built on two levels and the entrance is on the upper one. Access to the lower level is by stairs or lift. The equipment for its original purpose, to process the intelligence pods from U2/TR1 aircraft has been removed but the structure is otherwise untouched. It provides an interesting contrast with older bunkers elsewhere on this site. The pictures here were taken, as were most of the others on my pages, with a digital camera. In this case due to the lights being on in some areas and not others, some were taken using a torch and the reason was in some cases that the rooms in part of the bunker are lined with stainless steel. It would have been near impossible to use the built in flash there! With Maglite in one hand and Sony Mavica FD83 in the other, here is a brief tour of the building. Any people in the pictures are fellow members of the Airfield Research Group, with which group this visit took place. Link to ARG website on my index page! Building 210 is just a large mound from outside. The entrance is in a concrete tunnel across one face of the square mound. This has traverses at the ends to help to prevent blast from reaching the doors. This was after all a likely target in a nuclear strike. The doors are of two types. There are huge steel doors, like safe doors, for equipment on two levels and smaller but similar doors as emergency escape hatches. The main entrance is a wooden door, protected by a massive steel drop down shutter, when necessary. Inside here is a chamber with another safe type door and a further shutter protected door. This one is the entrance to the area where the pods would have been washed down if the plane had arrived through contaminated areas in time of war. This bunker like all the other seriously protected areas, uses the positive air pressure principle to keep radioactive or contaminated air out. The wash down chamber, stainless steel lined, leads via another sealed door to an air lock chamber, and via another steel sealed door to the bunker itself. In here are a number of rooms where the work was carried out. Personnel entering from the outside and likely to be contaminated would enter via a series of stainless steel lined rooms and progressively be rinsed down, disrobed, showered, re-clothed and admitted to the bunker, via a series of air locked chambers and showers. The equipment in the plant areas is massive and in excellent condition as it is almost new. The old British bunkers we see are from another generation and in many cases in poor order now. This place gives some idea of what they might have been like when new.


Looking from the outer entrance tunnel through the wooden entry door. Note the sliding steel shutter raised above the door. The edge of the safe style door is visible to the right. The round items on the wall are air ducts.


Inside the outer door is a chamber which is itself sealed from the bunker by another set of doors, the personnel door being shown here.


Through the first airlock door is the wash down area, lined with stainless steel. These views looking back towards the entrance.


From the wash down area, through the next airlock door is a chamber of similar size.


Through the final airlock door into the bunker proper. To the right here is a large room, (next picture) and behind and to the left smaller rooms, all empty now, but supplied with large numbers of power points.


This is the largest room in the bunker.


This view shows the steel airlock doors and entry to the shower and changing areas. Difficult to picture with flashlight and camera!


This shows one of the changing areas. Contaminated clothing left in one, through the shower, then pick up new clothing in another.


A passageway between rooms, and at the end an exit to the escape shaft.


A most impressive hatch leading to a ladder in a shaft and onward to the outside world eventually. Note the microswitch which links this and every other door in the premises to a warning system.


There are several plant rooms full of heavy duty equipment, this being only a small sample.