‘Zero stations’ built in case of successful German invasion
Cinema-goers who have been to see Darkest Hour recently will have been reminded just how close Britain came to giving in to Hitler in 1940.
Churchill’s determination that we would fight on was nevertheless tempered with a very real fear that we would not be able to stop a German invasion. To this end, he ordered the construction of 32 top secret underground “zero stations” which would be used by our resistance forces after the invasion.
One was at Hollingbourne, in the woods to the south of Ringlestone Road.
They were equipped with radio transmitters, and were to be supported by a network of thousands of civilians trained in guerrilla warfare and known as the British Resistance Organisation.
The plan involved civilians in coastal areas acting as observers who would report on the movements of enemy troops in their area.
Their messages would be left in dead-letter boxes to be picked up by a “cut-out” who would relay them to a short-range radio “outstation” where the intelligence would be transmitted in code to an “in-station” such as Hollingbourne for onward relay to the Home Forces Command.
The in-stations were to be manned by civilian volunteers. The out-stations by trained Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) personnel.
The radio antennae for the out-stations, which were frequently secreted in woodland, were usually disguised by being cut into the trunk of a convenient tree.
The remnants of the aerial at Hollingbourne could still be found until 1987, when the tree came down in the Great Storm.
The operation was so secret that even today the location of 20 of the 32 zero stations remains unknown.
The radio room and living quarters were behind a disguised door – the hope being that if the Germans found the first hatch, they would think it just a small ammunition dump and not investigate further to find the radio room.
Beyond the radio chamber, which contained the bunk beds and food store, a second room housed the generator and a chemical toilet, and beyond that was an emergency escape tunnel leading to a second hatch some 30 yards away.
At Hollingbourne the escape tunnel is now partially blocked with earth and all the equipment is missing, but the ventilation shafts and the remains of a fuse box can still be found.
The zero stations remained staffed and ready for use until the Normandy landings, when the possibility of invasion was finally deemed to be over.