dartford tunnel

[nicola lewis]

hi there all can any one help i have heard a rumour that the dartford tunnel was in use during the war as a laboratory yet the web site for the tunnel states they opened in 1968 can anyone come up with the truth?

[sddsddean]

The first bore of the Dartford tunnel didn't open until 1963, with the second bore following in 1980, so whoever told you it was used during the war (assuming they mean WW2) is telling porkies.

[brachiopod]

Parts of London Underground's Central Line (between Mile End and Stratford?) were used as munitions and machinery factories during the war. These tunnels were then newly built as part of a planned extension that was interrupted by the war.

[pinus]

Work on the Central Line eastward extension were suspended in 1939 with the outbreak of hostilities. 

The sections of new tunnel in East London were adapted as air-raid shelters, bomb-proof stores, and war material factories.  The Ministry of Aircraft Production arranged for Plessey & Co to have an aircraft-component factory in the twin 2 1/2 mile tunnels between Leytonstone and Gants Hill.

The scheme was organised in November 1940, and teh factory opened in March 1942

 

 

This information taken from "Seventy Years of the Central" published in 1970 by London Transport.

 

Various publications have photographs of the Plessey factory.