They formed an integral part of our war effort during the ‘Blitz’ – the WWII Luftwaffe bombing campaign on Britain by Nazi Germany.
Now, incredible images reveal three decoy bombing sites dotted around Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, little more than forgotten relics.
These secretive bunkers, built in 1941, were built to divert bombers away from key industrial buildings nearby, such as Wolstanton Colliery, Shelton Iron and Steel Works, Michelin tyre factory, Meir Aerodrome and Radway Green munitions factory.
Amazingly, the decoy sites were staffed by brave operators whose job it was to entice German bombs that could potentially kill them.
Britain had more than 200 of these decoy sites during the Second World War, but in a new study, researchers focus on three in the Stoke-on-Trent area.
It has been estimated that around 968 tons of German bombs were dropped on the decoys during WWII, saving lives as well as key industries.
‘The idea at first was that they were to protect the airfields upon which the defence of the UK depended, and these were largely dummy sites that were to attract the bombers,’ Professor Peter Doyle, military historian at Goldsmiths, University of London, told MailOnline.
‘The idea was then transformed into the protection of towns and cities based on some sites where oil fires were started to decoy bombers into thinking they had hit their target.’
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This decoy site near Keele was built as a ‘permanent Starfish’ site in August 1941 and remained active until April 1943. It originally consisted of controlled fires, to replicate areas previously bombed and to encourage bombing away from the industrial sites of Stoke-on-Trent
By the end of WWII there were 237 decoy sites protecting 81 towns and cities, factories and other potential targets, according to the experts.
Generally, they were stationed in relatively uninhabited areas, such as in woodland and in the countryside, well away from their intended targets.
In their new study, the team focus on three around Stoke-on-Trent in northern Staffordshire named after nearby villages – Keele, Beech and Caverswall.
All three were deliberately built along German radio beam directions – used as navigation in the early part of the war – to divert Luftwaffe, the Germany Air Force.
Officially they were termed ‘Special Fire’ sites, codenamed Starfish, where fires were deliberately started on the ground to fool the enemy into thinking targets were on fire.
According to Professor Doyle, Luftwaffe pilots, who later testified as prisoners, said they were under orders to add further incendiaries to any fires they saw alight.
‘It was known that German bombers would drop incendiary bombs to start fires as a guide to other bombers that followed,’ he told MailOnline.
All three decoy sites – Keele, Beech and Caverswall – were built as a ‘permanent Starfish’ sites in August 1941 and remained active until April 1943.
Researchers investigated the remains of three decoy sites in Staffordshire that were deliberately built along German radio beam directions – used as navigation in the early part of the war – to divert bombers from the high priority industrial target sites in the Stoke-on-Trent included Wolstanton Colliery, Shelton Iron and Steel Works and Meir Aerodrome
All three decoy sites including Beech (pictured) were built as a ‘permanent Starfish’ sites in August 1941 and remained active until April 1943
Cross section and birds-eye-view diagrams of various decoy shelter designs, redrawn from Air Ministry originals, including QL site (A), and Starfish control shelter (C). All of the sites investigated in our study had the configuration/layout as shown by (A) with two rooms – one a generator room and the other a control room
By 1942, they’d also incorporated the ingenious use of electrical lighting to imitate industrial activity, such as factory lights, locomotive glows and moving vehicles.
Around Britain, these simulated lighting (‘QL’) sites gradually became more sophisticated, intended to mimic a range of fires to better deceive the enemy.
For example, at a typical QL site, car headlamps were suspended on wires between supports to simulate aircraft moving on the ground.
All of the three sites investigated in the study had two rooms – one a generator room and the other a control room – with exhaust systems known as expansion chambers and all-important blast walls.
‘Even in such desperate times, site designers were still aware of how dangerous these decoy sites were for the crews manning them,’ said study author Dr Jamie Pringle at Keele University.
‘[Designers] tried to give them a better chance of surviving concussions from nearby bomb blasts which they were actively hoping to attract.’
At the Keele decoy site, researchers found remnants of large concrete bases required for electrical generators to shine out artificial lights.
Inside, the spooky bunker includes remains of curtains nailed onto the wooden door frames – an essential part of wartime black-out defences.
At the Keele decoy site (C), researchers found remnants of large concrete bases required for the electrical generators and the remains of black-out curtains nailed onto the wooden door frames. Also pictured, concrete base of electric lamp (D) and interior with black-out curtain remains (E)
Pictured, an escape hatch at Beech which had a ladder still positioned beneath it for operators to make a fast getaway if required
Beech site: Brick with V for ‘Victory’, bottom right, made by Potteries Brick Company Ltd, a local brick supplier
Meanwhile, the Beech site, heavily covered by vegetation and amongst a sloping soil embankment, features a well-preserved control shelter and brown ceramic pipes, plus the original blast wall.
Dislodged buff-coloured bricks from the control room show the inscription ‘PB Co. Ltd’ – denoting ‘Potteries Brick Company Limited’ a local supplier.
The bricks at Beech also feature the single letter ‘V’, believed to stand for ‘Victory’ as ‘it was produced for the Defence of Britain’.
An escape hatch on the roof had part of ladder still positioned beneath it for operators to make a fast getaway if required.
Remains of stove bases in the operations rooms for fires to keep the crews warm were also found at both Keele and Beech bases.
Lastly, at Caverswall, the only visible remains of the decoy bombing site are the concrete foundations and partial walls of the control crew shelter.
Post-war, the site was used as a marl pit, with the clay being used to locally to produce bricks, and the site now is part of Park Hall Country Park.
Overall, the researchers say this clever type of WWII defence was effective but ‘largely overlooked relative to the activities of the RAF’.
The Caverswall decoy bombing site is situated in an elevated position in public open grassland about 1.5 miles north-west of the village of Caverswall
Further study could shed light on the remains of more than 200 others, which could lead to national preservation efforts.
‘Many of these hurriedly made decoy sites still remain today in various states of preservation but they have been largely overlooked and forgotten about since the end of the war,’ said Dr Pringle.
‘While this study is limited to Staffordshire, further work should be carried out to survey and digitally record examples of other bombing decoy sites across the UK, to give a full picture on the preservation of these important sites.’
The study has been published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology.
How the Blitz was the most intense bombing campaign Britain has ever seen – claiming more than 40,000 lives
A boy retrieves an item from a rubble-strewn street of East London after German bombing raids in the first month of the Blitz, September 1940
The Blitz began on September 7, 1940, and was the most intense bombing campaign Britain has ever seen.
Named after the German word ‘Blitzkrieg’, meaning lightning war, the Blitz claimed the lives of more than 40,000 civilians.
Between September 7, 1940, and May 21, 1941, there were major raids across the UK with more than 20,000 tonnes of explosives dropped on 16 British cities.
London was attacked 71 times and bombed by the Luftwaffe for 57 consecutive nights.
The City and the East End bore the brunt of the bombing in the capital with the course of the Thames being used to guide German bombers. Londoners came to expect heavy raids during full-moon periods and these became known as ‘bombers’moons’.
More than one million London houses were destroyed or damaged and of those who were killed in the bombing campaign, more than half of them were from London.
In addition to London’s streets, several other UK cities – targeted as hubs of the island’s industrial and military capabilities – were battered by Luftwaffe bombs including Glasgow, Liverpool, Plymouth, Cardiff, Belfast and Southampton and many more.
Deeply-buried shelters provided the most protection against a direct hit, although in 1939 the government refused to allow tube stations to be used as shelters so as not to interfere with commuter travel.
However, by the second week of heavy bombing in the Blitz the government relented and ordered the stations to be opened. Each day orderly lines of people queued until 4pm, when they were allowed to enter the stations.
Despite the blanket bombing of the capital, some landmarks remained intact – such as St Paul’s Cathedral, which was virtually unharmed, despite many buildings around it being reduced to rubble.
Hitler intended to demoralise Britain before launching an invasion using his naval and ground forces. The Blitz came to an end towards the end of May 1941, when Hitler set his sights on invading the Soviet Union.
Other UK cities which suffered during the Blitz included Coventry, where saw its medieval cathedral destroyed and a third of its houses made uninhabitable, while Liverpool and Merseyside was the most bombed area outside London.
There was also major bombing in Birmingham, where 53 people were killed in an arms works factory, and Bristol, where the Germans dropped 1,540 tons of high explosives and 12,500 incendiaries in one night – killing 207 people.
