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Pontrilas Army Training Area (PATA) – updated March 2010

A site which shows a large number of aerial symbols like the one at Chelveston in Northamptonshire (below), might mean just a group of TV and/or radio masts. But in this instance, it's actually RAF Chelveston, former home to a USAF bomber squadron, but more recently a signals facility for the Defence Communications Services Agency (DCSA).

Take another look at the site by using Multimap's aerial photo which again shows fascinating detail, but try Google Earth for truly breathtaking high resolution photography of the huge "mast farm".

In 2004, the high frequency (HF) radio masts were dismantled and the 758 acre site was disposed of by the DCSA. In late 2005, it was sold by Defence Estates to a businessman who is in the process of developing it into Chelveston Renewable Energy Park.

In early 2006, the Chelveston aerial mast cluster was removed from OS 1:25000 maps, but remained at 1:50000 scale for a while until eventual deletion in July 2006. Around the same time, the local council's planning committee published details of a proposed anemometer mast, 70 metres (230 ft) high, to measure wind speed and other scientific data.

On older maps, another cluster of aerial symbols could be found in a field not far from Whipsnade Wild Animal Park near Dunstable in Bedfordshire, just over the border in Buckinghamshire next to the crossroads between Edlesborough and Dagnall on Gallows Hill. It was actually another DCSA site designated RAF Edlesborough which has also closed down.

The Chelveston aerial cluster is tantalisingly close to RAF Molesworth , which is comically labelled as a disused airfield on OS maps! Molesworth once stored Cruise missiles and is now one of the UK's most important and sensitive military intelligence bases. Indeed, the former Cruise missile bunkers are marked on the 1:25000 map and are clearly visible on Multimap's aerial photo. Note that the area is ringed by triple high security fencing.

To the east of RAF Molesworth's camp, in the "disused airfield" area , two main entrances to networks of underground bunkers can be spotted north and south, on Multimap's aerial photos. RAF Molesworth and the remains of RAF Chelveston can both be seen even better in exclusive Pilot's Eye Views taken by my expert contributor in August 2007.

Other similar military intelligence bases can be found at Chicksands (near Shefford) and Henlow, both in Bedfordshire and at Ashby-de-la-Launde near Digby in Lincolnshire.

DISC Chicksands, RAF Edzell and the FLR-9 CDAA

DISC Chicksands is the tri-service Defence Intelligence & Security Centre. It is the place where, in May 2003, journalists suggested that an alleged British Government spy within the IRA, known as "Stakeknife", was to be brought for "debriefing" by MI5 and the Army.

Giant Voice – US military base emergency alert system

RAF Croughton near Brackley in Northamptonshire is an old USAF airbase, but no runways have been apparent for many years. The base appears as a significant cluster of aerial symbols. That's because RAF Croughton is the focal point for the US military's communications within Europe.

On Get-a-map's 1:25000 map , they use that favourite epithet, "Wireless Station". Note on the aerial photo, not one but two high security SIGINT enclaves in the middle of the field which once housed the USAF airbase runways.

At the south end of the base, there's the cross formation transmitter enclave with an aerial mast in the middle, identical to the one which was once at MI6's agent communications station at Gawcott, Buckinghamshire, discussed earlier. Also note two baseball pitches, at the north west corner of the Croughton site, providing fun for the US base workers!

Croughton has a transmitter annexe at RAF Barford St. John near Banbury in Oxfordshire. This "disused airfield" is said to provide secure communications facilities for CIA agents and US Diplomatic personnel. The 1:25000 OS map reveals another good old "Wireless Station" label.

In 2007, an upgrade was made to the Station Personnel Alerting Systems at Croughton and Barford St. John in the form of new tannoys nicknamed "Giant Voice". These high power speakers on top of tall poles are used to broadcast tones and messages to muster base personnel at times of national emergency such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks. The system was first introduced following the 9/11 attacks in America.

After an embarrassing complete system failure in July 2005 – at the time of the London tube and bus bombings – the Giant Voice system was overhauled at key US military bases throughout the UK. As revealed in amazingly detailed architect plans submitted to the local council in a planning permission application, the tannoy pole at Barford St. John is located immediately north of the microwave tower adjacent to Building 85, within the secure compound in the middle of the "airfield".

Skynet 5 – Military Communications Satellite Project

The tiny village of Oakhanger, near the Army camps of Bordon in Hampshire, at first sight looks like a typical cross between rural farming landscape and wealthy stockbroker belt. However, the village has not one but two surprises beyond its leafy hedged lanes.

Take a look at the map of the village centre and hidden among the cottages and farms is the old RAF Oakhanger 1001 Signals Unit (now staffed by Paradigm Services, a private commercial technology company). It is now home to military communications experts, working on the Government's new "Skynet 5" satellite project. The original RAF signals site is now Paradigm's "TCS" - Telemetry and Command Station.

To the east of Oakhanger village, within the Army training area known as The Warren , is an enclosure which on the 1:25000 OS map was suspiciously empty, until I noticed that the map was suddenly revised by OS in November 2004!

The map data sources do not indicate any MoD activity with tell-tale aerial symbols. It is left to Getmapping's aerial photography data to finally reveal all. It is the location for a key NATO Ground Terminal for military communications satellites! It is designated Satellite Ground Station (SGS) Oakhanger. Note that an additional ground terminal is set away from this main site in an annexe, just a little further south west, but connected via a track through the woodland!

Skynet 5A – the first stage of three military communications satellite platforms – was finally successfully launched into space on board an Ariane 5-ECA rocket from Arianespace's European Spaceport at Kourou in French Guiana at 10pm (UK GMT) on Sunday 11th March 2007. Skynet 5A was accompanied on Ariane's payload by an Indian TV satellite, the Insat 4B. The launch had been delayed from the previous day because of technical problems with sensors on the Spaceport's ELA-3 launch pad water deluge system, which provides acoustic damping during ignition and lift-off.

Skynet 5B had a provisional date set for 9th November 2007, but was delayed due to "an anomaly in the launch vehicle". Another launch window was arranged for Monday 12th November, but this was cancelled too when a fault was found during fuelling. The Ariane rocket finally lifted-off exactly 48 hours later at 10pm (UK GMT) on Wednesday 14th November and the 5B satellite was deployed 30 minutes into the mission. The other payload was a Thales Alenia Space satellite, which will be used by Brazilian operator Star One for communications, multimedia and broadband Internet services over South America.

Skynet 5C – an in-orbit spare back-up – was due to go into space on Friday 30th May 2008, but the launch was postponed after a software test showed a "non-nominal result". It was eventually successfully deployed on June 12th.

As revealed fully elsewhere in Secret Bases, Paradigm has other key Skynet 5 sites at Hawthorn , in the middle of a field in Corsham, Wiltshire and within RAF Colerne nearby, again sometimes referred to as a "disused airfield", but which is now Azimghur Barracks. The newly upgraded facility at Hawthorn is now known as Paradigm's Network and Spacecraft Operations Centre. In 2008, SGS Colerne was upgraded with additional dish antennae as revealed in architect drawings!

Until 2005, another satellite ground terminal could be found at the highly sensitive military communications base at Defford in Worcestershire, alongside the M5 motorway. This site once provided a home to the RAF's 1001 Signals Unit, but more recently QinetiQ (pronounced "kinetic"). This organisation represents the commercial sector wing of the Government's defence related research activities and was formed in July 2001 out of the old Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA). At the same time, the Government's top secret laboratories, retained under strict MoD control, were brought together to form the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) network.

QinetiQ's Defford base featured a high security enclave , which was built on top of the deserted runways, where all the really sensitive signals intelligence (SIGINT) work was carried out. Right up until the end of 2005, the enclave was one of those "sensitive" sites still "airbrushed" from both 1:50000 and 1:25000 OS maps, but curiously the Government's own MAGIC interactive mapping service always showed the full detail at 1:10000 scale .

In December 2005, Ordnance Survey revised the 1:25000 scale data on their Get-a-map service to show the secure SIGINT area on top of the runways. But this new openness was all too late for Defford!

Rumours had circulated in early 2005 that activities and staff numbers at QinetiQ's Defford site had been significantly reduced to a "care and maintenance" level. When I contacted QinetiQ's Customer Enquiries Team in June 2005, at their HQ within Cody Technology Park at the Farnborough Aerospace Centre, they would only reply cautiously, "We can confirm that Defford is no longer used as a QinetiQ site". Indeed, all that now remains on site is the radio telescope – part of the Jodrell Bank Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN).

A little further research revealed that over previous years, QinetiQ had awarded a major contract to a specialist security company to upgrade the perimeter surveillance and control systems at Defford so that they could now be remotely observed and controlled by staff at their main site at Malvern, a few miles away (also described further below). The state of the SIGINT buildings on top of the runway at Defford (shown above in 1999) was therefore shrouded in even more mystery!

I pressed further and approached QinetiQ Malvern's Media Relations Office. An official spokesperson kindly furnished me with the information below. Furthermore, a quick trawl of the Internet soon got me the minutes of West Mercia Police Authority's 2005/2006 Budget Meeting held on 15th February 2005, which included the tantalising paragraph:-

"The Authority has also agreed to pursue negotiations for a lease of the former military base at Defford, near Pershore, which will reduce accommodation pressures in a number of areas including storage, driver and dog training, radio and vehicle workshops and Central Motorway Patrol Group".

A strategic review document published on the Internet in December 2005 revealed further intriguing proposals for West Mercia's new Defford base. It was suggested that it will be used for the force's "Protective Services" covering serious, organised and cross-border crime; public order; critical incident management; civil contingency planning and counter-terrorism. The document also hinted at a "national police organisation" being interested in relocating to Defford! Could this be a reference to the new Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) – the so-called British FBI?

Project HYDRA – the many heads of SOCA: "The British FBI"

Since its creation, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) has been hiding behind "PO Box 8000" – an address administered at a Royal Mail depot close to Walworth Police Station in south east London. How ironic it was that in early 2008, the Government's own secure mail address database was listing the real physical address of SOCA's HQ at the Spring Gardens office development at the appropriately named Citadel Place off Tinworth Street near Albert Embankment in Vauxhall, close to the HQs of both MI5 and MI6!

The locations of the new regional MI5 offices throughout the UK are obviously a closely guarded secret. However, the same is not really the case with those of SOCA. They have helpfully put them fully into the public domain by including them on Royal Mail's address database!

As well as using various Police Force HQ conference facilities, the new regional SOCA offices are used by the Agency to train officers in the handling of serious crime investigations using HYDRA simulation techniques. The HYDRA system was developed by Professor Jonathan Crego at the Centre for Critical Incident Research (CCIR) within Liverpool University's School of Psychology, who has also designed MINERVA simulations for more common everyday scenarios. He is now a consultant with the Metropolitan Police Service.

The official SOCA website has posted adverts for the recruitment of Hydra Training Managers and specified a "secretive" job location somewhere in Harlow, Essex. The location was given away by a property developer who boasted of a newly refurbished building being leased to the "Home Office" for 20 years. It is Templefields House in River Way, Harlow - immediately adjacent to the Wincanton and Excel Logistics distribution hub for Comet.

The SOCA facility in Harlow was previously a sales HQ for the giant Diageo corporation (owners of famous drinks manufacturing names including Guinness). The address is now confusingly listed on databases as "SOCO" though! Rather plush offices for mere Scene of Crime Officers dusting for fingerprints!

Yet more SOCA recruitment adverts have revealed a new forensic analysis laboratory in Staffordshire. To complement existing labs run by LGC Forensics (formerly the Laboratory of the Government Chemist), the new SOCA Biometric Lab at Unit 3, Drayton Manor Business Park in Tamworth is now open for business next door to the famous family amusement park of the same name.

Other laboratories (the addresses of which are curiously not revealed on the official LGC website) are located at Darwin House at Birchwood Park, Risley near Warrington, Cheshire and at Building F5 within Culham Science Park near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. LGC have also set up a SOCA forensic lab at the new National Firearms Centre within the Royal Armouries in Leeds.

Out of all the UK's major Police HQs hosting HYDRA sessions, the brand new purpose built Portishead Down HQ of Avon and Somerset Police Force is most probably concealing another SOCA regional office too.

Up in Manchester, another SOCA base can be found hiding in the middle of an industrial estate behind the famous Trafford Centre shopping mall. In early 2008, the address databases were helpfully listing "SOCA" at Units 3/4, Unison Business Park on Robson Avenue, Trafford Park. A tall lattice telecoms tower sticking out of the rear compound is also a giveaway.

In 2008 I discovered a covert operations base for SOCA operating out of new offices built in 2000 on the site of an old haulage truck depot on an industrial estate in a town near Wakefield, West Yorkshire. It had originally been built for the Regional Crime Squad and National Crime Squad – the pre-cursors to SOCA. It is adjacent to a motorway junction with rapid access to both the M1 and M62. I even obtained the architect's plans for the SOCA Wakefield base by serving a Freedom of Information request on the local council, but I am not revealing its precise location.

Likewise, I shall merely "mention" a similar covert operations base for SOCA on an industrial estate in a West Sussex town close to Gatwick Airport. But amazingly, in a mind-boggling lapse of judgement, SOCA flagged-up the location themselves by placing their address on a business directory, yet using a fake Limited Company name made up of letters from their supposedly secret cover codename! Naturally, I checked with Companies House but the name is not currently registered. Furthermore, it has never been used by anyone else before and then dissolved. Sloppy!

Meanwhile, in Scotland, SOCA isn't so coy and freely declares its home on the official website of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA). SOCA is colocated with SCDEA at Osprey House (built in 2002) on Inchinnan Road at the old Paisley Harbour near Glasgow International Airport.

While Metropolitan Police vehicle compounds are obviously used for the storage of recovered stolen cars, they also contain forensic laboratories for SOCA analysis. The existing facility at the Angerstein Centre on Bramshot Avenue in Charlton, south east London has been joined by a brand new one at the Bilton Centre , off Walmgate Road in Perivale, Middlesex. It has been built on the site of a 1960s Ministry of Labour Government Training Centre.

Think back to the new Airwave secure communications system for the emergency services described at the beginning of this page. In April 2008, SOCA placed another job advert [PDF] on their website to recruit an Airwave System Supervisor [profile, PDF] based at a new purpose built Regional Control Centre (RCC) "somewhere in the East Midlands".

In previous years, much had already been written about the consolidation of more than 40 national Fire Brigade control centres down into just 9 brand new regional centres. Whilst their use has been described as being merely part of the Fire and Resilience "FiReControl" Project, the SOCA advert hints at an even more significant role for the nine new buildings. The successful candidate will oversee "the first national covert Airwave communications system".

Ostensibly, each new building location has been chosen on the basis of low risks from flooding and other disasters. They have also been sited at major transport hubs – apparently for the convenience of the staff who will have to relocate or be recruited. What a nice employer!

But consider another more pressing need for all of them (except the Greater London one) to be located right next to motorway junctions and you'll soon get the bigger picture. Perhaps a "multi-agency" network of rapid response teams reacting to "incidents" which threaten the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). Take a look at all the detailed architect drawings of the RCCs on the local councils' websites.

Incidentally, how apt it is that the London RCC is being built on the site of a demolished warehouse next door to the Thames Television studios where ITV's long-running police drama "The Bill" is filmed! In contrast, the Warrington RCC has been built on the site of the famous WWII USAF base RAF Burtonwood.

MPSTC Gravesend

Take a look at an interesting secure depot on the east side of Gravesend in Kent on the Thames Estuary. Scrutinise the land next to the National Sea Training College campus and the Port of London Authority's old Quarantine Station and you'll find the new Metropolitan Police Specialist Training Centre (MPSTC) . The depot is fully labelled on MAGIC's 1:10000 map . In June 2007, it finally made it onto Google Earth at hi-res in a major UK imagery update.

The £55m MPSTC was built by Equion (part of the John Laing group) in a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) deal. It was officially opened in April 2003 and provides the capital's officers with firearms and public order training by tutors from The Met's CO12 branch.

Brave students in riot gear are taught how to deal with petrol bombs being thrown at them. Weapons training is provided on indoor laser ranges and outdoors on the Army's old Milton Range further east. The MPSTC includes a mock-up of a mini town including a bank, shops, night club and even a football stadium. Also featured are train and underground stations with full size carriages and a section from a passenger jet – utilised to great effect by specialist firearms officers from Scotland Yard's elite CO19 (formerly SO19) branch.

In early 2009, the Gravesend facility played a crucial role in the Met's training to deal with the possibility of rioting protestors at the G20 Summit of world political leaders, as part of the massive police and counter-terrorism security plan codenamed Operation Glencoe.

The previous facility, which the Gravesend base replaces, was at the north east corner of Hounslow Heath near Heathrow Airport. This could be seen at hi-res on Google Earth until Autumn 2006 and showed the scorched mock-up streets and many of the features now incorporated into the new Gravesend facility.

The latest Google Earth imagery for London shows that the whole MPSTC Hounslow Heath facility has now been bulldozed and replaced with a new housing estate.

Meanwhile, down in South East London, tucked into the residential suburbs between Sydenham and Penge East train stations, you'll find the Metropolitan Police's Operational Technical / Technology Support Unit (OTSU) at Newlands Park (pictured further below in a Bird's Eye aerial view), based in an old factory.

In December 2005, Thames Valley Police officially opened a new £5 million indoor firearms training range within the grounds of its Sulhamstead House training centre near Reading in Berkshire. It was built on the site of some older mock houses that had been used for various tactical training scenarios. Study the aerial imagery further below showing the before, during and after phases of the construction project.

Up at the other end of the country, another brand new Tactical Firearms Training Centre has been built for joint use by Cleveland and Durham Police Authorities. It can be found at Urlay Nook in Eaglescliffe, at the old rail hub entrance to a former Royal Naval Supply Depot, opposite a huge chemical plant and also near Teesside International (now Durham Tees Valley) Airport.

Up in Scotland, not to be outdone, Strathclyde Police have opened a brand new training base at Jackton , East Kilbride on the outskirts of Glasgow. It comes complete with weapons ranges, driver training and public order mock-up facilities.

Mystery bunker – case solved!

Do you live near Macclesfield, Cheshire? Did you know there's a secret structure (below) built into the side of Billinge Hill at Rainow? It's hidden inside the south eastern part of the disused Billinge Quarries on Blaze Hill. All the other parts of the old quarry workings have been filled in and are now overgrown with vegetation. But this location has a gated access road, a recently well-used hardstanding area and what seems to be a blast door entrance to a bunker with four ventilation shafts on top!

Astonishingly, the gate is just a standard one you'd find on a farm track and the security is low key to say the least. But the sign warns that 24 hour emergency access is required and that trespass is prohibited under the Explosives Act! Why would explosives be stored at a disused quarry? They wouldn't be stored there when it was active – a remote store would be used. Why is there no permanent guarding?

I had heard persistent rumours that whenever there is an incident threatening national security, the local police are sent up to this site to guard it for the duration of the state of high alert. There has been so much speculation regarding its purpose, from avid readers of Secret Bases, that I decided to settle the matter by performing a Freedom of Information Act request to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Within just a matter of days, they very kindly responded with the full details!

After all the excitement, disappointingly there's no mysterious MoD bunker concealing covert military operations. However, my FOI request to HSE revealed the owner of the site as a very interesting local business, using it since 1978.

It turns out to be Edgar Brothers located on Macclesfield's Lyme Green Business Park in Unit 3 on Heather Close. Originally founded in 1947, they are one of the UK's oldest, well-established importers and wholesale dealers in firearms, ammunition and associated products. As well as the obvious sporting and leisure clients, through their Police and Military Division (PMD) they are official suppliers of guns, knives, high power torches, weapon lights, clothing and footwear to all UK Police Forces and MoD. A major US Government and DoD supplier Blackhawk is pushed too, with a link to their video promotions website.

Small wonder that earlier in 2008, the then Chief Constable of Cheshire Police (Peter Fahy – since moved to Greater Manchester Police) declined to respond to my repeated formal requests for comments on security at the site. With the UK's gun and knife crime epidemic, one can only hope that things have now improved substantially. But then again, remember that not all surveillance is obvious nowadays!

Thor missile launch sites

Have a look at the area just to the south of the village of Feltwell in Norfolk, near to the town of Thetford and the major USAF airbases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath .

The site at Feltwell is an old airfield that even pre-dates WWII. The Feltwell Golf Course was built on top of one part of the old aerodrome and its evocative address is "Thor Avenue", which runs north-east / south-west through the Golf Club from Wilton Road. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the golf course area was the site of the Thor missile launch base.

Amazingly, until the data was eventually revised in March 2006, Ordnance Survey's 1:25000 scale map of the golf course still showed the positions of the Thor launch pads even though no trace of them can be seen on the aerial photo!

Various other fascinating locations for Thor missile launch pads from the 1960s can still be seen on aerial photos of old WWII airfields. There were originally 20 Thor launch sites (including Feltwell) organised into four groups of five sites (one main, plus four support sites). Each Thor site comprised a cluster of three missile launch pads, making a total of 60 Thor missiles deployed.

Of those 20 original sites, only the following ten can still be made out on aerial photos:-

The remaining nine Thor sites, apart from Feltwell, were at the old wartime RAF airfields at Driffield , Full Sutton , Carnaby , Tuddenham , Mepal , North Pickenham , Coleby Grange , Bardney and Hemswell .

On August 25th 2009, more than 75 firefighters struggled to contain a huge blaze in one of the old hangars at RAF Hemswell, which had been used as part of the AWS Eco Plastics Hemswell Cliff recycling plant.

If you thought RAF North Luffenham's Thor missile launch pads were interesting, read on throughout Secret Bases to find out what else lurks alongside the old runways!

The Thor site at Bardney, on the other side of Market Rasen to the Caistor and Ludford sites, is marked on the OS 1:25000 map , in the middle of poultry farm buildings! However, the remains of the launch pads are barely visible on Getmapping's aerial photos, but can be just spotted on Google Earth.

Likewise, south of Lincoln, another old Thor site was located near to the village of Boothby Graffoe. In more recent times, the village achieved a more innocent form of fame. It was adopted as a stage name by an award winning comedian whose showbusiness career rocketed (!) following an appearance on the Opportunity Knocks TV talent show in the late 1980s!

The Thor launch pads at Boothby Graffoe's old WWII airfield at RAF Coleby Grange have been covered by outbuildings on what is now Boothby Heath Farm, but the classic three-pad Thor layout can still be seen on the 1:25000 map .

The nuclear warheads for the Thor missiles were stored at a special secure area within RAF Faldingworth , just south of a large conventional munitions storage area.

The airfield was "airbrushed" from OS maps for over 20 years, before finally making an appearance in the 1980s. It is now detailed fully at 1:25000 and even 1:10000 scales. The nuclear warhead stores at Faldingworth were also used by RAF Scampton close by.

A similar nuclear warhead storage area, used for other projects in the 1950s, can be found on Thetford Heath at Barnham in Suffolk. Note on the 1:25000 map of the site, the unmistakable - dare I say it - Pentagon shape! In modern times, the site has long been used as the very mundane sounding Gorse Industrial Estate.

The Barnham nuclear store had previously been used for storing chemical weapons. Another old mustard gas storage area can be seen further south, at the former Little Heath Forward Filling Depot (FFD) . Note that it was once connected into the adjoining dismantled train line.

While you're studying the old secure depot at Barnham, take a look at another nuclear weapons storage area from the 1950s, on the north side of RAF Honington nearby. Amusingly, the old bunker area - ringed with three security fences - was still "airbrushed" from even the 1:10000 map until it was finally revealed in 2010!

In recent years, the bunkers there have been used to provide temporary accommodation for nuclear warheads travelling between AWE Burghfield, AWE Aldermaston and RNAD Coulport in Scotland.

Nowadays, RAF Honington provides a base for the tri-service Joint Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Regiment, previously known as the Joint Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) Regiment.

Bloodhound missile launch sites

Now you're used to spotting Thor launch pads, try looking for the sites of other missile systems from the 1960s! An excellent example can be found on the windy Lincolnshire coast near Cleethorpes, at the old airfield at RAF North Coates .

The high security compound shows a large matrix of launch pads for the low-range Bloodhound surface-to-air missiles pointing east, intended for anti-aircraft defence at the height of the Cold War.

Additionally, in a secure enclave to the north of RAF Barkston Heath , alongside the Roman road Ermine Street near Grantham, Lincolnshire, you can make out the old Bloodhound launch pads there too. More old Bloodhound missile pads can be seen over on the east side of the Breighton Thor site mentioned previously.

Two further good examples can still be seen at the old RAF Bawdsey coastal radar site near Felixstowe and Ipswich in Suffolk and at the remains of RAF Woolfox Lodge right by the A1 near Clipsham in Rutland, Leicestershire and close to the major airbase at RAF Cottesmore.

RAF Feltwell and the Son of Star Wars!

The SAS and PMCs – Private Military Companies

Going back to the Defford former SIGINT base, discussed earlier: on the other side of the nearby town of Pershore, you'll find Throckmorton Airfield . Both of the Defford and Throckmorton sites are yet more "Disused Airfields" on OS maps, which of course can only mean they're of great MoD significance!

Throckmorton was home to the old DERA Pershore base (which itself grew out of the Royal Radar Establishment) and in recent years, just like Defford, it was operated by QinetiQ.

Throughout the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, the airfield was known as RAF Pershore and it was one of over 30 dispersal sites for the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent, the Vulcan V-Bomber force, carrying the Blue Danube atomic weapon.

Rather than a "Secret Base", Throckmorton's village residents are all too familiar with the site. In 2001, one end of the old airfield was used as a mass burial ground for animal carcasses during the UK's Foot and Mouth Disease disaster. In 2002, the other end of the airfield was considered by the Government as a possible location for a new "processing centre" for asylum seekers, until villagers waged a very successful campaign against it.

Many former members of the SAS, the UK's Special Forces, have left to set-up their own specialist operations known as PMCs – Private Military Companies or Contractors. One such leading worldwide PMC, ArmorGroup, has based its new close protection (CP) and defensive driving training facility at Throckmorton Airfield. Since 2008, ArmorGroup has been part of the G4S Group (formerly known as Group 4 Securicor).

Another PMC made up of ex-SAS members (now part of ArmorGroup) - Phoenix CP  [info pack, PDF] - has used a close protection, counter-surveillance and communications training base at Longworth Hall in the village of Lugwardine just east of Hereford. Due to the handgun ban, specialist live firearms training by the PMCs is held outside the UK in places like Switzerland and obviously America.

During 2007, Phoenix CP announced they were vacating Longworth Hall and moving to a new training facility "by the end of summer". Curiously, in February 2008 the Phoenix CP website suddenly went dead and the parent company ArmorGroup announced that the courses had been suspended  [press release, PDF].

Yet another PMC, the AKE Group - spearheaded by former SAS member Andrew Kain - started off with its admin HQ at Mortimer House, within an industrial estate in the Holmer suburb of Hereford. In 2005, AKE received the Queen's Award for Enterprise, in the International Trade category, for "risk mitigation".

In 2006, AKE moved its HQ into the historic centre of Hereford, near the cathedral, to an office within St. Owen's Chambers , on the street bearing the same name. A presence was also established in Albyn Terrace in the heart of Aberdeen in Scotland, at the office of a marine logistics company which provides expert solutions in offshore personnel transfers. In late 2007, AKE was acquired by the Cerberus Group, run by yet another SAS privateer, Will Scully.

The ex-SAS officers have based their own private operations close to their former homes at the original Bradbury Lines barracks in Hereford's Lower Bullingham district and the new Stirling Lines depot, which since 1999 has been based at the much bigger former RAF training centre at Credenhill.

Note at the far southern end of the Credenhill base the remains of a dismantled antenna array similar in layout to the famous Chicksands aerial system also featured in Secret Bases. It can be seen in extreme close-up on Windows Live Local. Following a major UK imagery update in June 2007, it can also be seen in high resolution on Google Earth.

The AKE Group holds regular instructional seminars further afield, at a hotel and conference centre deep inside SAS training country among the Black Mountains and Brecon Beacons, at the village of Allt-Yr-Ynys on the Wales / Herefordshire border.

Less than ten miles to the north east, you can find the Pontrilas SAS counter-terrorism trainer unit and its infamous mock-up jet hidden in a forest clearing, featured elsewhere in Secret Bases. But do the PMCs have access to this?

The amphibious SAS sister organisation, the Special Boat Service (SBS), have their HQ within the Royal Navy's shore establishment HMS Excellent on Portsmouth's Whale Island, just north of the main Naval Base.

However, the SBS training base is at at the huge Royal Marines depot at Hamworthy near Poole, Dorset. It sits next door to the popular holiday resort's very public Rockley Sands caravan park and is surrounded by all the exclusive multi-million pound real estate around Poole Harbour. Just a little further south, next to all the boat yards at Lake Marina, you'll find the SBS harbour depot where all the equipment is kept.

In March 2010 it appeared on Google Street View even showing the perimeter sign that reads "This is a prohibited place within the meaning of the Official Secrets Act – no loitering, sketching or photography". The Street View imagery was removed just a week later!

BBC Radio 4: Lives in a Landscape – "Under Throckmorton"

Listeners to the UK's BBC Radio 4 on the morning of Monday 4th September 2006 were spluttering over their eleven o'clock cup of tea! A new series of "Lives in a Landscape" – a gentle documentary series in the style of "Down your Way" – kicked off with an episode called "Under Throckmorton", devoted to this tiny village in the heart of the English countryside. It could almost be the location for Radio 4's old favourite long-running soap "The Archers". Writer and presenter James Maw had approached me to act as research consultant on the programme!

NCISRA – Naval Criminal Investigative Service Resident Agent

Over on the other side of the M5 motorway from their Throckmorton Airfield location, QinetiQ have significant presence in the Worcestershire town of Great Malvern. One site at the south of the town is at the old Royal Radar Establishment (RRE) . Research work here involves everything from stealth and radar jamming to computer hacking.

Another QinetiQ base in Malvern can be found to the north of the town next to an old DERA location, referred to by locals as MoD North Site , which is due for redevelopment by the council.

By checking the aerial photos below, note how the tell-tale geometric building layouts for both of the Malvern sites are identical to not only the old parts of the GCHQ bases in Benhall and Oakley in Cheltenham, but also the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) sites at Ensleigh and Fox Hill in Bath (since April 2007, DE&S – Defence Equipment and Support).

Furthermore, compare those aerial shots with another old GCHQ site at the end of Lime Grove in Eastcote , West London near Ruislip, Middlesex.

This site was used temporarily by the Government Codes and Ciphers School (GC&CS) after leaving "Station X" at Bletchley Park in the late 1940s, but before moving to the permanent Cheltenham base - by then renamed GCHQ - in the early 1950s. Later, the old GCHQ Eastcote "Government Buildings" were occupied by civil servants from the Department for the Environment and the Department of Transport.

The US Navy had a significant presence there during the Cold War and they still keep a US Embassy liaison unit for the DoD's naval recruitment team.

It has also provided barracks for the US Marine Corps Security Force (MCSF), whose members protect the US Navy establishment at 7 North Audley Street, Grosvenor Square, London, in the ever important counter-terrorism role. Meanwhile, the US Embassy nearby is protected by the Marine Corps Embassy Security Command (MCESC) – the new name for the Marine Security Guard Battalion (MSGB) since April 2007.

Even more intriguingly, one of the buildings at Eastcote provides the "London, UK" office for the US Navy's NCISRA - the Naval Criminal Investigative Service's Resident Agent. Worldwide, the facilities are also referred to as Resident Units (NCISRU) and Regional Offices (NCISRO). NCIS agents are tasked with countering and investigating terrorism, espionage, computer intrusion, fraud and other serious crimes against people and property.

Since 2003, there's even been a hit TV drama called NCIS shown in the US in primetime on the CBS Network and also in many other countries around the world. In Summer 2006, the UK's Channel 5 also showed it on Saturday nights.

• www.ncis.navy.mil
  
• www.cbs.com/primetime/ncis/

Britain's very early signals and radar research work first started on England's south coast at Steamer Point , on top of Friars Cliff, close to Mudeford near Christchurch, Dorset.

I remember spending many childhood summers at the neighbouring Sandhills Holiday Centre at Mudeford. I was fascinated by the huge white golf ball radomes further along the beach at the Signals Research and Development Establishment (SRDE). This site hosted the UK's first military communications satellite ground terminal. The SRDE's main base was a little further inland at what is now BAe Systems at Somerford, Christchurch.

In 1980, the SRDE finally pulled out of the Christchurch location and the activities were merged with those of the RRE at Malvern. Today, a commemorative plaque at the old Steamer Point radome site remembers the signals and radar experts who worked there.

Now, let's consider two classic examples of Britain's "top secret" sites which just didn't feature on maps ... until January 2005!

The UK Government's key atomic weapons sites are located at Burghfield and Aldermaston, both in Berkshire. But by studying the OS maps, you'd have thought they might be hidden underground! The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Burghfield was last included on an OS map way back in 1974 and had never been seen since. Rather comically, AWE Aldermaston (which is actually the size of a small town) kept appearing and disappearing, depending on which issue of the OS map you were looking at and which scale. It reminded me of the legend of Brigadoon!

Until December 2004, the older OS map data through the Multimap website just showed AWE Aldermaston as plain woodland and AWE Burghfield as a completely empty field! Ordnance Survey's Get-a-map site, which obviously has all the latest definitive data, correctly showed the Aldermaston site (innocently labelled "Depot") at 1:50000 . But when you viewed the same area at 1:25000 , the site suddenly reverted to Burnham's Copse!

However, all this changed suddenly in January 2005, when OS updated their online 1:25000 map data to show both AWE Aldermaston and AWE Burghfield in full detail, but the 1:50000 scale data for Burghfield was to take another 18 months before being updated.

The Royal Mail address database correctly lists AWE Aldermaston (with the post code "RG7 4PR"). However, AWE Burghfield is hidden away masquerading under the innocuously sounding address, "1 The Mearings, Burghfield, Reading, RG30 3RR", which turns out to be the main high security gate! Try plugging those post codes into Multimap and Getmapping and see what happens!

Before January 2005, even on Get-a-map, AWE Burghfield was conspicuous by its absence at both 1:50000 and 1:25000 scales. It is actually situated in the space between Burghfield Place, Burnthouse Bridge and Grazeley Green. It wasn't until July 2006 that the Burghfield atomic weapons site finally made it back onto OS maps at 1:50000 scale after 32 years in the secrecy wilderness!

Consider AWE Burghfield again but this time, view the aerial photograph on Multimap's site and overlay the map, which has now caught up and also features the new data! Try the same with AWE Aldermaston's aerial photo and the map overlay. Indeed, this hilarious "now you see it - now you don't" trick (below), showing glaring discrepancies between OS maps and Getmapping's aerial photos, was the original inspiration for this whole website back in 2003!

Just to the north east of Burnthouse Bridge, you can make out the remains of a disused train branch line . This line once connected into the nearby main line which, further south, goes right past the former munitions depot at Bramley (mentioned earlier). The maps and photos of the Bramley munitions depot show that it, too, was once connected into the same main line. During WWII, the AWE Burghfield site was a conventional munitions factory.

For the residents living next to these sites, they are all too real. Especially when they have been forced to use bottled water because of suspicions that the local supply had been contaminated by toxic chemicals.

The AWE sites and all other sensitive UK military and Government sites, such as Faslane nuclear submarine base, are patrolled by Ministry of Defence Police (MDP). Their main training centre and MDP HQ is contained within a deserted WWII USAF airbase at RAF Wethersfield , a few miles north west of Braintree in Essex.

There are two Operational Support Units (OSU), for rapid emergency deployment of MDP Officers. The southern OSU is at Wethersfield HQ, while the northern OSU is within RAF Dishforth , between Ripon and Thirsk in North Yorkshire. The unit is strategically situated alongside the A1(M), with good access to all major routes.

AWE have another small site at AWE Blacknest at Brimpton Common, just a couple of miles to the west of AWE Aldermaston. This site, within an old country house, contains large computer systems and is staffed by scientists researching seismological activity, in order to verify nuclear test bans.

A former top secret remote AWE facility, involved in testing nuclear weapon triggers, can be seen at Orford Ness on the coast of Suffolk. The derelict remains of strange buildings resembling pagodas can be spotted on the beach. Further north up the coast, the remains of the 1960s Cobra Mist over-the-horizon radar project can be found. All these Orford Ness features are pictured further below in exclusive Pilot's Eye Views.

On the images of AWE Aldermaston and AWE Burghfield below, hover over each image with your mouse pointer to compare each aerial photo with the corresponding OS map. Click on each image to switch the map between the different scales and data revisions!

AWE Aldermaston's "Burning Ground" annexe

Using the latest hi-res imagery on Google Earth and Google Maps, next to AWE Aldermaston itself, you can spot a mysterious secure depot , hidden in a clearing in a wood called The Birches. Furthermore, the depot is clearly connected directly into AWE Aldermaston using an underpass beneath Red Lane, a minor public road which runs alongside the complex's eastern boundary.

In June 2006, I made a formal application to the MoD under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. The official response revealed that the depot is used by AWE Aldermaston as a "burning ground" to incinerate non-nuclear explosive waste material.

In my special implementation of Google Maps further below, look out for some other Secret Bases in the area clustered closely together, the purposes of which are revealed later in this page. Keep on reading!