RAF Bentwaters was one of the huge Cold War airfields in Eastern England, used by US forces, but originally set up for the RAF. Much has been written about it due to its significance especially in its final years, and I will not be trying to improve on previous histories. What you will see here is a brief look at the site, in late summer 2003, at the beginning of a more definite post military life for this impressive site. Many airfields have been destroyed and the site returned to agriculture in the area and this one has found uses, including agriculture, but much will remain and there will be a Cold War museum on site in the near future. The current owners are local farmers and they intend to use the site in some measure for its original agricultural purposes. Their interests are many and varied and other parts are even now pressed into light industrial use and despite some drastic change, it will still be recognisable for many years. Previous owners tried to make this into an airport, but this use was rejected by planners. This tour was an organised one and Bill Kemball, who has many years experience of living and farming next to the site, and now of owning it, was our informative guide.
One of the obvious features of the site is the weapons store area. Typical US store, like the one at Alconbury. It consists in a similar way of discrete conventional stores, mostly igloos, and the more secure nuclear stores, in a multiple fenced site with special watch tower. The site was set up when in the 1950's F86 Sabres were here.
The conventional stores are arranged in rows, and there is still a nice Braithwaite water tower outside the area.
Past the typical entry control point, similar to Alconbury.
We come to "hot row", the nuclear stores.
Within the same secure area is a maintenance building and the component store. Herein may lie the answer to one of Bentwaters mysteries. There is a story circulating about a soldier who was one of the team who had the keys to a high security area, and let a man in who looked in a box at a piece of metal and then left. We are invited to assume this was some alien technology. The description of the security arrangements fits the component store like a glove. Here is part of an email from a former worker in the Weapon Storage Area from the 1980's. It does show how these stories start! "The safe was already out of use when I arrived but here are two very interesting stories about it. One, we used to lock new people in there for initiations to the WSA. When inside with the door closed it is utterly, utterly dark and quite freaky. Two, we used to tell people that parts to UFOs were kept there as it was absolutely the safest place on base, after all it had two combination locks that required two different people to open (no one person could know both combinations), two people to open the door to the building (for the same reason), you needed security to get into the WSA which was inside the flightline, which was inside the base. So, you'd need at least 5 people just to get into the vault so that's where the UFO parts were. This story has turned up on some UFO sites so we must have made an impression."
The component store is the first building on the right, then an emergency water supply tank, then behind the earth bank, the maintenance building.
The front of the component store, building 398
Inside is the concrete safe, and this is the door, complete with multiple locks, the only one like it on the site.
Just to prove it was open, here is the inside, no alien spacecraft, just a red light bulb to flash in the woods, maybe?
Not all the buildings remaining are either unusual or from the Cold War era. There is a splendid control tower.
There are two T2 hangers, one re-clad recently and the other in need of it.
There are many standard NATO HAS's around the airfield. Some are as built and simply used for storage.
One even has some planes inside! A light aircraft and a Tornado in need of assembly in this case.
There are some wriggly tin huts too (others can argue if these are Quonset or Nissen!)
Part of the Cold War setup was the Victor alert area. Here were two rows of shelters, surrounded by double fences like the nuclear area, where armed planes waited for the call, and these have been altered for storage in later years, with no fences.
But, where are the ducks in this tale of intrigue, you might well ask? Many of the HAS buildings have been altered slightly, in that the main doors have been set partly open and new doors made in the gap, and the building surrounded by fencing and these have been used for keeping many white ducks, as part of the agricultural use of the site. A nice compromise, and one which allows the site to remain and earn its keep at the same time!
Another aspect of the current alterations to the site, which are helping to bring in some revenue, is the removal of the concrete extensions to the main runway. These Cold War additions are 5 foot thick mass concrete. It is being re-cycled as various grades of agregate and the reulting hole filled with soil. More buildings around the site include four separate one million gallon fuel tanks, originaly supplied by underground pipelines. Here is just one.
The old engine shop, where the jet engines from modern warplanes were maintained, is now filled with vintage vehicles.
However, some of the former facilities remain, like these cleaning tanks.
One of the more impressive, and I am told by the locals, welcome, facilities was the Hush House. This building was a small hangar type building, made specially with stainless steel and sound absorbent lined walls, and a huge silencer for the jet eflux. It allowed planes to be run up to full power inside without deafening the locals! This is the outside.
This the exterior of the silencer.
The control room inside is fully insulated too.
Inside the building with the entry doors closed, planes were winched in backwards through these doors.
Waiting for ET to emerge from the spacecraft, I am sorry, I don't know what came over me then! This is the silencer, big enough to walk through comfortably and the jet exhaust was deflected upwards at the end of this pipe by concrete blast deflectors.
There have been rumours of underground facilities on Bentwaters for years. It is possible to walk under the airfield for some considerable distance, if you are not too tall. There are two five foot diameter drains which collect water from other collection chambers across the site, and deposit it in a huge soakaway pit, but this is not what the rumours were about. In the recent dispersal site which runs in a circle in the trees close to the bomb store, is a building inside an unusual concrete wall. Apologies for the picture and the next few, taken through a bus window with rain on it.
This building is not itself unusual, but there is an apparent mystery about the area in front of it. There is an emergency water supply tank and an area with a number of septic tanks for the buildings here. There are however, a couple of taller pipes and near them, some septic tanks were found 20 feet below the surface. The only sensible reason for having these 20 feet down is to serve an inhabited building at a similar depth. The pipes are marked here by a red arrow.
Close to this area was a small car parking area, for no obvious reason. The other buildings have their own car parks. It was taken up by the current site owners, and the site is marked here.
In front of the water tank the ground is quite uneven and apparently disturbed. You can make your own guesses as to what this is all about! I suspect someone will take a digger to this area one day and we shall all be a bit wiser. Just one final comment, how did the name Bentwaters arise? It seems there were two cottages on one part of what is now the airfield and they had a well, constructed in such a way it was shaped a bit like a corkscrew, hence the name bent waters.
For more information on the planned museum at Bentwaters, then go here;
Bentwaters Cold War MuseumFor more information on current and future status of Bentwaters Airfield site, go here;
Bentwaters Parks Ltd.
