JAMES GRASBY: In front of us there on the skyline is the
medieval castle of Dover, and it was said to be the key to
England.
At the start of the Second World War, Britain is ill-prepared to
fight.
Uncovered history shows just how close it was to being invaded by
the Germans.
How did Dover's Fan Bay Battery artillery defences and tunnels
help protect Britain from disaster and change the course
of history?
Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join
me for an inside view of the stories of people, places and
moments that made us.
I'm historian James Grasby. Lean in for a tale from time. Back
When.
Today we are journeying back to the tense days of World War II,
to the rediscovery and restoration of the Fan Bay
Battery, a crucial part of the coastal defences of Britain.
Along the way we will delve into the lives of the personnel who
served here, explore the extraordinary engineering of the
site, and understand why preserving this history is so
important.
This is the remarkable story of Dover's Fan Bay Battery.
So I'm heading along the seafront now. I mean, to my
right is rather a gracious, curving crescent of what looked
like Regency Seaside villas.
To the left is the harbour with an enormous ferry heading over
to, I guess, Calais with a shingle beach and a steely grey,
rather chilly-looking sea.
And I think that's my friend John Barker, who's going to give
me a tour of the Fan Bay Battery.
John!
JOHN BARKER: Good to meet you.
JAMES GRASBY: Hello, pleased to meet you.
Now look, in front of me, I can see a fascinating looking
monument which I think illuminates some dark days in
the history of Dover.
JOHN BARKER: It does. So this is the Lindemann Monument. It was
actually cut from one of the German cross-channel guns that
particularly harassed Dover during the war years.
JAMES GRASBY: There's a piece of painted metal which you say was
dismantled from one of the German long-range guns in France
that was firing on Dover.
JOHN BARKER: Yes. And on it you've got the number of shells
and all of the dates that were fired. On to Dover and St
Margaret's.
JAMES GRASBY: Different gun emplacements at Calais fired
around 2,200 shells in total at Dover during the Second World
War.
Scars on the townscape remain to this day. But let's step back to
1940 and set the scene.
In front of us there on the skyline is the medieval castle
of Dover, and it was said to be the key to England.
Dover is the nearest point to continental Europe in Great
Britain. The year is 1939. Hitler invades Czechoslovakia,
Poland, takes Norway.
There's the fall of Holland and Belgium, and then France.
And by June of 1940 German forces are 20 miles away.
They've set up an artillery emplacement, and they are firing
direct over the water, firing shells over the Channel and
pounding Dover.
JOHN BARKER: Yes.
After the fall of France, there was a very famous incident when,
if you look up at the castle, you might just be able to make
out a balcony up there, and it was said that Churchill was in
Dover, and he witnessed German ships freely moving through the
Channel.
And at that point in time, we didn't have the naval ships, we
didn't have the artillery to prevent that from happening.
So he writes this typically Churchillian memo to all the
Joint Chiefs Of Staff saying we must fight for the command of
the Dover Straits.
So he instructs the formation of technologically advanced, very
heavy artillery on the Dover Cliffs.
Some people in the military referred to them as Churchill's
pets.
JAMES GRASBY: British forces were facing the threat of the
most formidable European army since Napoleon's in the 1800s.
America at this time had not yet joined the war, and Britain was
under great pressure.
These were desperate times, and the people of Dover knew the war
was going badly, as they could see injured service personnel
being brought back on boats before the news of the fall of
France even hit the media.
Would it have been possible to see the German forces in France
from the clifftops here and see the smoke of Dunkirk from here?
JOHN BARKER: Absolutely.
JAMES GRASBY: So it would have been vivid.
JOHN BARKER: Yes. Even now you can actually stand on the cliffs
on a clear day and with binoculars read the Calais Town
Hall clock.
JAMES GRASBY: That is terrifying.
JOHN BARKER: Obviously much more worrying times then in the war.
And if you're serving on one of the batteries on the cliffs and
you saw a flash, that meant a shell had been fired at you.
And after that, you've got 70 to 90 seconds before it arrives.
JAMES GRASBY: In June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill
declared that an invasion of Britain was highly likely.
Securing air and naval superiority was paramount, and
the Battle of Britain was fought.
Hundreds of planes clashed in the skies against the Royal Air
Force, and Dover was extensively hit.
JOHN BARKER: They would dive-bomb on the harbour to
attack ships. Take out barrage balloons as well.
JAMES GRASBY: So here in front of us, I've seen footage of
Stuka dive bombers attacking merchant vessels in this harbour
in front of us.
JOHN BARKER: Yes, yeah.
JAMES GRASBY: And it was here, vivid, and conceivably watched
from the rooms of these gracious Regency villas, in fear.
JOHN BARKER: Yeah, and there's some interesting stories of
journalists that were embedded within Dover, frantically moving
from guesthouse to guesthouse, pub to pub, sometimes sitting
and working in bombed-out buildings because the town was
such a ruin.
So would you like to come to Fan Bay and see the next chapter in
the story?
JAMES GRASBY: I'd love to, John, lead the way!
A short drive from the seafront are the White Cliffs of Dover.
The Fan Bay Battery is a group of huge guns that were installed
on the top of the cliffs, and they were part of the wider
defenses of Britain's coast.
The Royal Engineers began construction of the site in
October 1940, and despite extremely challenging weather
conditions, completed the many parts of the site needed for the
soldiers to live and operate the guns by mid-February 1941.
We've come right up onto the top of this chalk cliff, really.
I mean, there's South Foreland Lighthouse, I think, just
peering over the horizon. And rather a craggy, open landscape
of a wonderful chalk downland with the sea extending as far as
I can see.
I guess that's France.
JOHN BARKER: Yeah, that's France. And also, the tide is
quite low. Can you see those pieces of metal sticking up?
JAMES GRASBY: Yes, I can.
JOHN BARKER: So that's a shipwreck. That's the Preussen.
A five mast German ship.
JAMES GRASBY: Really? My goodness.
There were three, six-Inch guns, installed at the Fan Bay site on
the cliffs. It was one of many installations of big guns around
Dover.
A Six-Inch gun means the diameter of the inside of the
gun's bore, and each gun weighed six to seven tonnes and was 24
feet from breech to muzzle or from end to end.
Operating a six-Inch coastal gun typically required a crew of
about seven or ten personnel, including loaders, gunners, a
range finder or director operator and a commanding
officer.
JOHN BARKER: If you come down here, you can see where this was
the crew shelter.
JAMES GRASBY: The crew shelter, so we're now descending a cast,
shuttered concrete steps, down onto a lower level. So broadly
speaking, we're now looking over the top, the sight line that the
gunners probably would have got.
The guns fired shells, which I suppose are about the size of a
small fire extinguisher, pointed at one end, and were roughly 45
kilograms each.
The shells were packed with explosives and could fire
between 12 and 14 miles. So what were the crew doing when they
weren't working?
JOHN BARKER: So when they weren't on the gun they would
have been taking refuge in their crew shelter. You can just about
see the remains of the door there.
JAMES GRASBY: Right, so this was a subterranean, bomb-proof,
blast-proof shelter.
JOHN BARKER: Yeah, built into the emplacement. So there would
have been a bench in there, there would have been a little
fire in the back corner where they would have tried to keep
warm.
Imagine being up here, you know, this time of year during the
war.
JAMES GRASBY: The soldiers who operated the gun battery started
the war living in a huge network of deep tunnels.
They are located a short walk from the Fan Bay Six-Inch gun
battery. If you were one of the personnel, you would have taken
shelter inside these excavations.
One of the key volunteers at Fan Bay who can help give us a
clearer understanding of the lives of the soldiers in these
tunnels is Gordon.
GORDON WISE: We are now about to descend 125 steps into the deep
shelter itself.
We're about to head down three staircases with two landings.
All right, here we go then, all the way down.
JAMES GRASBY: It's very much got the atmosphere of descending
into a mine.
GORDON WISE: You've now done the two longest staircases you're
now coming up to the third one which will bring us to the point
23 meters inside the White Cliffs of Dover.
The troops when they moved down here in March of 1941 these
tunnels would have been completely open.
JAMES GRASBY: Gordon, I can't quite believe the space that you
brought me down into.
We've descended the flight of steps. There are now two tunnels
going off at right angles.
I mean, it's about seven, eight feet to the top with these
rusting I-beams. These colliery arches coming down, texture of
corrugated iron, very low light, concrete floor.
It's a oppressive sort of space isn't it?
GORDON WISE: It is indeed and the lighting that we've actually
got down here is actually about five to six times brighter than
what the troops would have had when they were down here in
1941.
JAMES GRASBY: So give me a sense of what it would have been like
for me coming down here in 1941.
GORDON WISE: What I want to do is point you to a painting. Now
this painting is done by a gentleman called Captain Anthony
Gross.
Gross is a war artist, he's a prolific war artist. And what
you can see, you have your colliery arches and your steel
sheeting in there, but also you can see beds.
The beds would have been all the way down both sides of the
tunnels and you can see on the end of this bed there's the
outline of the soldier's webbing equipment.
This is all his backpack, his kidney pouches, his army belt
and what have you, which indicates that this is living
accommodation.
This is not just down here for shelter.
We've got a soldier here standing probably, oh yeah, he
is standing on a stepladder, but he's changing the light bulb.
Probably the 160 watt light bulb had failed, so they've got to
get another one in.
Soldier sitting on the beds, writing home, doing what
soldiers do.
JAMES GRASBY: So Gordon, this is very tightly packed, isn't it? I
mean, the width of this space is about-
GORDON WISE: Nine feet.
JAMES GRASBY: Nine feet. So you've got beds opposed to one
another running the full length. What's that 40 feet?
GORDON WISE: And full length of all of the tunnels.
JAMES GRASBY: It must have been extremely cramped. Extremely
cramped.
GORDON WISE: And very smelly as well.
JAMES GRASBY: And extremely smelly. And I wouldn't enjoy
being in the top bunk, really. There's very little air up here.
It feels slightly as if you're in a submarine.
GORDON WISE: The analogy is absolutely excellent.
JAMES GRASBY: Despite the high-tech weaponry, the living
conditions for the soldiers were extremely difficult.
With scarce records of the soldiers serving here existing,
every small memento tells a story.
And you just stopped at what looks like a coat hook. I don't
believe it.
GORDON WISE: And it is exactly a coat hook. And it tells a lovely
story. Because what we do know is the tunnels were never ever
completed fully.
On the plans, in between each set of two double bunks should
have been a space for a coat rack and rifle rack. Those coat
racks and rifle racks was never fitted.
This soldier has obviously wanted his own coat hook. So
he's probably gone off to the officer's toilet, unscrewed it
off the wall, brought it back, and there we are, the soldier is
now happy he's got his own coat hook.
JAMES GRASBY: That's lovely. I was going for a time of Lawrence
Of Arabia's place, Clouds Hill, and this lovely expression of
our army life. He said, give me the luxuries and I can live
without the necessities.
And I guess it must have been a great luxury to have somewhere
to hang your dripping coat.
GORDON WISE: To hang your great coat yeah!
JAMES GRASBY: That must have been such a boon, mustn't it?
The soldiers not only spent their time painting, but also
amused themselves etching some toilet humour onto the walls of
the caves, most of which is unrepeatable.
GORDON WISE: On the back of these bricks, there are two
pieces of, shall we say, Second World War soldiers' toilet block
humour.
We won't necessarily go into it for fear of offending people,
but if you wish to have a look at them on your way through.
JAMES GRASBY: Oh come on Gordon, let's have a look! What does it
say?
GORDON WISE: When you come into these halls, use the paper, not
the walls. If no paper can be found, run your arse along the
ground.
Anyway!
JAMES GRASBY: Gordon this is unbroadcastable material!
But it does speak of the time, doesn't it? And in a revolting
way.
The sacrifice of the servicemen and women began to pay off as
many other coastal defences were constructed around Dover.
The huge guns provided a very credible deterrent and fewer
German ships began to enter the Channel, which disrupted their
logistics and the war effort.
Tell me more about the sort of personnel who would have been
serving here.
GORDON WISE: So down here, you would have had at least 136
Royal Artillery soldiers, officers, NCOs and other ranks.
JAMES GRASBY: So 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year, surveying,
looking out to sea, looking out for enemy shipping, but most of
the time in a state of readiness, not actually firing
their guns.
GORDON WISE: And the thing is that it also brings in another
story because although they do do visual lookout, the main
source of spotting of moving targets for these gun sites is
Radar.
Radar was, in 1941, absolutely the most top secret thing you
could have.
JAMES GRASBY: Radar worked by sending out radio waves from an
antenna. A signal would bounce back to the Radar from a plane
or ship. And by measuring the returning signal, allied forces
could work out how far away ships were.
The radars were linked to the guns and would help them aim.
Now many leaders from around the world visited to view this
technology, including American leaders, Indian Maharajas, Saudi
Arabian sheikhs, and even the Burmese Prime Minister.
Whilst the soldiers were safe from enemy fire in the tunnels,
other dangers awaited them inside.
GORDON WISE: We know there was ill health down here. In fact,
we've got the battery commander's records out, a
gentleman called Major Baker Carr.
He was the one that wrote the letter saying, I don't like my
troops living down here, it's bad for their morale. And the
word morale has been crossed out, the word health written in.
JAMES GRASBY: Baker Carr's records were classified by the
army and no-one knows exactly what happened to him.
GORDON WISE: And we think that what happened was that he was
taken out very ill with respiratory problems. And he was
treated at the chest hospital at Maidstone.
JAMES GRASBY: The incident was a turning point and the tunnels'
use was changed.
GORDON WISE: At that point, the tunnels are then evacuated. That
is when the remedial work is then done. But the soldiers do
not come down here to live anymore.
By this time, they are now in very nice, warm Nissen huts on
the surface, under camouflage.
And they're probably quite happy.
Right lads we're going to move you back down under the tunnels
no you're not!
JAMES GRASBY: What a wonderful tour but that was fantastic,
memorable.
GORDON WISE: Thank you very much!
JAMES GRASBY: So grateful to you.
And with that it was time to return to the surface and visit
the final significant part of the Fan Bay gun battery site
John we've left the sea by 300 meters inland or something
around this chalky upland.
And there's an area of coarse grass that you brought me to,
which I have to say looks pretty unpromising.
JOHN BARKER: Well, this is actually one of the most
exciting parts of the site.
So this is the battery plotting room and command post. So this
is the heart of the operation that's here. And all of this
site, it's all covered over. Early in the 1960s, after the
site is decommissioned, it's completely buried.
JAMES GRASBY: Returning to the present, much of the history was
in danger of being lost forever. The site was in fact a treasure
trove of wartime technology and heritage, and was excavated by
John and his team a few years ago.
But you're telling me under our feet is an underground plotting
room?
JOHN BARKER: Yeah, that's right.
JAMES GRASBY: Wow. We're going to have a look?
JOHN BARKER: So we're going to go in the emergency entrance,
and then we'll go down and have a look.
JAMES GRASBY: After descending into the plotting room, it is
clear that it is a Second World War heritage site that is
similar to the discoveries in Bletchley Park.
It is the only surviving plotting room, largely untouched
since the Second World War, and a time capsule.
Wow. That is astonishing.
JOHN BARKER: Imagine how exciting it was the first time
that we came in here.
We'd excavated the deep shelter and we'd been wondering for some
years whether this structure still remained because we knew
that it was very, very important.
And we had this dig where all of a sudden we find the hatch cover
and it's intact. So it's this real sort of Tutankhamun moment.
JAMES GRASBY: That is staggering. That is staggering.
I can't believe what I'm looking at, John.
I mean, the space that we've walked into, it has the sort of
air of those who know the South Bank and that sort of brutalist
post-war architecture. It's all of shuttered concrete.
There's no sense of giving any consideration to how it looked.
It's just entirely practical. It's brutal, isn't it? And
pretty claustrophobic.
Here you get a little bit of paint, I guess, that sort of
wartime green with a little strip of colour here.
Now we go back to 1941. The officer responsible for the
whole of the site was named Captain Lionel Strange.
He was a remarkable man whose ascent through the ranks was
rapid. He was only 23 years old when commanding the site. And
photos of him meeting Winston Churchill are displayed in the
Fan Bay Tunnels.
So Captain Strange-
JOHN BARKER: Was the battery commander
JAMES GRASBY: Battery commander.
And from this room he would have been commanding 150 plus people.
JOHN BARKER: That's right. So from here, Captain Strange would
have been commanding the whole of the Fan Bay Battery.
JAMES GRASBY: Now, come on, John. What is going on in this
room? Plotting room. This is the nerve center.
JOHN BARKER: So this is the most important place. This room would
have been filled full of equipment.
This is using mechanical computers, so they're using
something called an admultifier control table. Would have been
located over here. Can you see what the sign says next?
JAMES GRASBY: Isn't that wonderful and very evocative?
Unauthorized persons are forbidden to interfere with
equipment by order.
The control table, through a system of mechanical computers,
was connected through cables to the gun battery.
Moving the controls and dials on the control table would directly
give coordinates and move the settings on the Six-Inch guns.
The Fan Bay Battery acted as a significant deterrent to the
invasion of Britain, along with the other coastal artillery and
defences in the area, and helped prevent invasion.
The guns were fired many times and helped maintain control of
the Channel, just as Churchill envisioned.
What is this?
JOHN BARKER: So this very large metal box here. That is full of
filters.
It has the ability to shut off air to the surface. It's got the
ability to recycle air, but more importantly, it's got the
ability to clean air if there was a gas attack.
JAMES GRASBY: Wow. What a prospect to be sealed in in here
and without air.
With that, it was time to return to the surface.
That was the most fabulous tour you've given me. It's really
intoxicating and it meets sort of all my cravings for
archaeology and investigation and history and real people.
It's all here, isn't it?
JOHN BARKER: And there's still more to find, so you'll have to
come back.
JAMES GRASBY: I would love to.
The discovery and restoration of Fan Bay Battery is a reminder of
the hidden stories that lie beneath our feet, waiting to be
uncovered and shared.
It's been an incredible journey from wartime necessity to
rediscovered treasure.
Thank you for listening to Back When. If you enjoyed this
episode, don't forget to like, subscribe and share it with
others who might find it interesting. Stay tuned for more
stories that bring history to life.
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