Western Approaches Command Bunker

The Western Approaches Command Bunker at 1-3 Rumford Place in Liverpool, England, was the underground headquarters from which the Allied campaign against German U-boats was directed during the Second World War. In early 1941 Admiral Sir Percy Noble moved the Western Approaches Command from Plymouth to Liverpool, which sat at the end of the Atlantic convoy routes, and staff worked from a bomb-proof basement beneath Derby House, built with reinforced concrete several feet thick. From here naval, RAF and civilian staff, including many Wrens, tracked convoys across the Atlantic on large wall plots, plotted U-boat positions and ordered escorts to protect merchant ships. The bunker played a central role in the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous campaign of the war, which kept Britain supplied with food, fuel and munitions. Later commanders including Admiral Sir Max Horton refined the tactics that turned the tide in 1943. When the war ended the rooms were locked up and left almost untouched for decades, then rediscovered, restored and opened to visitors in 1993. The preserved spaces include the Main Operations Room with its great wall map, the Wrens' dormitory, the Captain's Office and the cipher and communications rooms. Original telephones, furniture, maps and equipment remain in place, and the labyrinth of corridors has a claustrophobic atmosphere. The museum takes an immersive approach: rooms are presented as they stood in the war, with audio guides and period sound effects, and the rooms illustrate daily life as well as strategy. The preservation is ongoing, with periodic repainting and conservation work. It is one of the best-preserved command centres from the Second World War in Britain.