Battle of the Atlantic operations room
Today in Normandy the heads of state of the World War II allied forces and the last few veterans are commemorating the seventieth anniversary of D-day, a day that changed the course of modern history.
Last week that I visited an exhibition in the Cité de l’Architecture at the Palais de Chaillot, Architecture en Uniform about the advances in architecture and design generated by the second world war. It clearly showed how World War II effected the built environment and design far from the front line. One particularly evocative type of space, so familiar to us in movies, was missing from the exhibition for me was the operations rooms so I’ve decided to make up for it and deal with it here.
In war films the operations table in the war map room is a familiar sight. Each major front or operation had it’s own situations room. An intense hidden space, that’s cut off from the word, with all the subterfuge of a basement night club. The dynamics of the fighting may have played out on the field, but the dynamics of the war were played out on the map room tables. All the intelligence about everything from weather to enemy positions, that were gathered by radar, radio or sightings, was channeled towards the situations map on the table which has an accurate position all the troops, little wooden blocks modeling thousands of men that were pushed around with rakes by smartly dressed wrens, almost like in a game but far more serious. These physical models of the battle field allowed informed decision as to how to maneuver in battle.
What happened on these tables controlled the lives of the men in the battle field, and the outcome of a war.
Battle of Britain Bunker, RAF Uxbridge
The Sector Operations Center at RAF Middle Wallop
Imperial War Museum reconstructed 1940 Operations Room, which directed aircraft in the Battle of Britain.