LONDON — A secret underground war room used by British commanders to plot the courses of Allied and enemy ships during World War II opened to the public on Monday after being shrouded in mystery for half a century.
The Coastal Artillery Operations Room, located in an underground labyrinth more than 100 feet below Dover Castle, was part of a huge network of tunnels carved into the southeastern coastal region's famous white cliffs.
The room, kept classified by the British military until 1986, was used by Sir Bertram Ramsay and his staff in 1940 to organize one of the most dramatic operations in British history — the Dunkirk evacuation. Some 800 civilian small craft joined navy vessels in the rescue of more than 320,000 British and French soldiers stranded on the beaches of Dunkirk, France, under heavy German fire.
Maggy Taylor, a curator at Dover Castle, said she has been piecing together the room's history since she first saw it more than a decade ago. Because much of the war work at Dover Castle was kept secret by the British military, Taylor said pinpointing the exact history of the room has been a challenge.
"The thing is, nobody knew the room was here," Taylor said. "It was a secret until it was declassified in 1986. There were a few mentions of it in the paper or by people, but it was hard to get hold of a lot of information."
Using photographs found in the archives of the Imperial War Museum and local newspaper in Dover, Taylor and other curators recreated the room complete with an original plotting table, charts and equipment.
The room is the latest in a series of military attractions open to the public along the three-mile tunnel system, which includes a military hospital, bunkers that housed thousands of soldiers and nuclear bomb shelters created during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Former military staff who worked in the operations room attended Monday's unveiling.
Win Winfield, 79, who mapped ship routes, was one of 27 people who staffed the room in shifts around the clock. Monday was the first time she had seen the room since the war.
"I know there was a war going on, but the camaraderie in the room is something I will never forget," said Winfield, who now lives near Canterbury, England.
"We never really knew much of what was going on above us because we were in the room and had a job to do there."
On the Net: English Heritage on Dover Castle - www.english-heritage.org.uk/days-out/places/