WHAT’S THE STORY?

An abandoned nuclear bunker outside Largs is being restored and a small museum built to honour the work of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC).

WHO WERE THE ROC?

They were a civilian volunteer group which watched the skies for enemy planes during the Second World War. It was the ROC who tracked the flight into Scotland of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, who crash-landed in Eaglesham.


But with the advent of the Cold War the popular image of Observers with their binoculars and tin hats became outdated as the nuclear age brought jets and ballistic missiles, so they were given a new role – to report the size and location of bombs and monitor the subsequent radiation in the event of a nuclear war breaking out. They came down from the roofs and hills and went underground into tiny bunkers.

WHAT DID THEY DO?

They trained every weekend, learning how to use the equipment and cope with life underground. More than 800 bunkers, placed about 10 miles apart, formed a network across the UK and if nuclear war threatened they’d receive an order to descend.

If incoming missiles were detected, major police stations would be alerted via a bank of telephones called a Carrier Control Point.

They’d use these to trigger local sirens and to send a verbal message to the ROC bunkers’ Carrier Receiver, saying “Attack Warning Red”. This was the notorious four-minute warning. One Observer would go above ground to wind a hand-powered siren – the same as used in the Blitz. This was of particular importance to rural communities who’d be unable to hear the large urban sirens. In extremely remote areas the local vicar, grocer or pub landlord might be given a Carrier Receiver and siren to alert those in the vicinity.

Underground, Observers would ready their instruments to monitor the destruction. There was a Bomb Power Indicator to measure the blast wave, and a meter to detect radiation levels. Both were connected to the world above by pipes, meaning Observers could obtain readings from the safety of the bunker, but the Ground Zero Indicator, a pinhole camera set up to capture the location of the nuclear burst, was above ground and one unlucky Observer had the task of going outside, 60 seconds after the blast, to obtain the scorched photographic paper inside it.


Theirs would have been the first glimpse of a post-nuclear world –though we can assume they wouldn’t linger long to take in the view. However, they were asked to make a quick visual assessment of the mushroom cloud – and be sure to close the hatch in case another bomb dropped while they were up there.

The reports from hundreds of these tiny bunkers would be communicated to headquarters, who’d create a picture of the country, determining which areas were safe and which annihilated and, using weather forecasts, where radiation was likely to descend. This would allow the authorities to see which transport routes were accessible in order to organise aid. It would also allow fallout warnings to be issued, with the alert being given by the explosion of “maroons”.

These were essentially huge military fireworks and three blasts signalled danger. Unbelievably, before the development of maroons the fallout warning would have been given by someone running in the street to bang a gong or blow a whistle.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE IN THE BUNKER?

Entry was via a metal hatch which revealed a narrow shaft and a steel ladder descending 25 feet underground.

The bunkers were small, designed to accommodate only three people, and were cold and Spartan. Each had a tiny room with a chemical toilet then a larger room containing a desk, the equipment, and a pair of bunk beds. The Observers would have lived here for three weeks, with no heating or natural light, eating tinned rations which earned nicknames like “Babies’ Heads”, “Possessed Cheese” and “Unexploded Chicken Supreme”. Some would add a curtain, a dartboard or scrap of carpet to make their bunker more homely and one Observer intended to pack her make-up and Iron Maiden music: even in these grim conditions, the human spirit forces its way through.

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE SKELMORLIE BUNKER?

Frank Alexander served with the ROC for 12 years. Driving past his old abandoned bunker at Skelmorlie one day, he had the “mad notion” to restore it.

It lies in a farmer’s field so he contacted the owner and agreed to rent the bunker, which is fenced off to keep inquisitive cows away. He says the bunker was nothing but a “concrete box”, the contents having been dumped in skips when the ROC was stood down in 1991, and so he began sourcing old equipment, bunks and ration tins and restoring it to its original condition. “This is my retirement project,” he says. “It’s to keep me occupied and out from under my wife’s feet.”


His quest was a success. Indeed, he found so much equipment, as well as ROC memorabilia and books, that he needed storage space, so he acquired an old NHS clinic in Largs which is now being transformed into a museum dedicated to the work of the ROC in both the Second World War and the nuclear era.

He hopes it will educate people about the strange and essential role of the ROC, a brave band of ordinary people – professionals and enthusiasts, housewives and students, mums and dads – who are too often forgotten.