Whitley Aerodrome

The "NOISE" In the mid fifties our family circumstances were about to change dramatically - my mum got a job at GEC, Spon Street, and my father at the Standard. This enabled us to move from the two up two down terrace in Sovereign Road, with its tin bath, outside toilet and gas street lighting, to the absolute kids' paradise of Allesley. Acres of fields, woods and streams to explore, cattle at that time grazed in the field which is now Allesley Hall Drive, and Allesley Castle still had a filled moat! But there was something which interrupted our play - without warning a noise louder than a jet engine filled the air maybe for 20/30 seconds and then it was gone. This reoccurring noise seemed to come from the Whitley direction, nobody seemed to know what made it, it was just known as the NOISE. Every Sunday us kids were taken out in our dad's Vauxhall Wyvern with our granny to a pub in the country so mum could prepare Sunday dinner. We often travelled along the A45. There was an interesting complex on the edge of Whitley Aerodrome, chimneys and trenches with turf covering most of it. We were told it was a secret underground facility! Many years later I found myself working at Whitley and decided to find these tunnels, but they had gone, the A46 and the council had wiped them out. Much later, black and white photo's started to appear around the factory. I traced the source to the maintenance dept, they were having a clearout. There were hundreds of high quality photo's, I believe they were commissioned by Peugeot when they took over the site. I sifted through a dozen of them - one caught my attention. Suddenly I was whisked back to my mystery noise all those years ago. This is where it had come from, a photo of two massive concrete underground bunkers with concrete blast wings - to these wings were arranged water pipes (similar to a car wash), in the distance a water tank on top of a tower. This must have been where they tested the missile rocket engines and the source of the NOISE - amazing really, just metres from the A45. Can anyone who worked on them confirm this and what went on there? I think the completed missiles were transported to a test site on the coast in mid-Wales. Now, can you remember the NOISE?

At this time members of our family lived at Baginton Fields hostel, adjacent to this site some fields away. During regular visits and out blackberrying and playing in those fields the earth literally shook and the noise was very loud. We put it down to rocket motor testing or jet engine test. On another occasion my cousin wandered into the underground bunker and it was stacked with military wares, vehicles and other stuff - this would have been 1951. Apprehended by a security type guard he was marched off site and told never to tell anyone about what he had just witnessed. He was so scared and never told a soul until he told me a few weeks ago when we were reminiscing about our escapades over those fields.