Spotter - I took the liberty of highlighting your post to Roy Bullers and Dougie Robb and Roy very kindly replied to me which I have posted as a direct cut and paste from his e-mail:


"Thank you for your E-mail dated 3 May 07 regarding the Northolt Ops Room.   A very interesting question which had us scratching our heads and much reaching for reference books, all without any real end product.

We have come to the conclusion that not much research has been carried out regarding fighter station operations rooms.   Yes, they all had them but there the information trail seems to end.

At the start of the war, the fighter station operations room was located on the station (and presumably Building 27 at Northolt concurs with this).   Certainly at RAF Coltishall it was located at the rear of, and part of, the same building as the Station Headquarters.

At some time, the date eludes us,  but certainly after the outbreak of war since reference is made to bomb damage, Air Vice Marshal Gossage, AVM Park’s predecessor at HQ 11 Group, had suggested that ‘standby’ operations rooms should be made available two to three miles from the airfields, and Air Marshal Dowding gave instructions that control should be moved to these emergency ops rooms if this had not already been done.   Several station ops rooms had already been damaged, resulting in loss of ground control.

We know that on 31 August 1940 the ops room at Biggin Hill received a direct hit during a bombing raid.   Temporary accommodation had been set up in an empty shop in Biggin Hill village and was put into use, until such time that a large house nearby, called “Towerfields” had been requisitioned as the standby ops room.

In view of the threat, the ops room at Coltishall was moved to beside what is now the Norwich Ring Road at Catton.    However, this property was itself damaged in a raid on Norwich and a large house, called Stratton Strawless Hall, some 5 miles west of Coltishall, was requisitioned as the standby ops room.

Similar action that we know of, but not the dates, include RAF Kenley which moved to a disused butcher’s shop in the village, for RAF North Weald which moved its ops room to Blake Hall in Ongar, and for RAF Middle Wallop which moved to premises in Over Wallop nearby.   When these movements occurred is difficult to ascertain, but in view of the Gossage/Dowding comments above, and the fact that for Northolt Building 27 was in use for another purpose after June 1940 as the ops room had moved to Ruislip Underground station, possibly indicates that the movement programme for ops rooms was undertaken sometime before the Battle of Britain commenced in July 1940.

Therefore it would appear quite likely that Building 27 at Northolt was no longer in use as an operations room by the time of the Battle of Britain (7 July – 31 October 1940), though further investigation as to the dates of the moves to standby accommodation would be required."

Hope it helps - all credit to the Team from the ADRM!!

Nick