Looking for those cruise missiles - a visit to Greenham Common

It's said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Well, the road to nuclear annihilation is paved with the same stuff most British roads are paved with.

Had the Cold War (maybe the First Cold War now?) ever gone hot, then 24 vehicles, each armed with four nuclear cruise missiles, would have come down this road and made their way to pre-planned launch sites in the Berkshire countryside, ready for orders to launch weapons on targets in the Soviet bloc.

Greenham Common is of one of the most well-known sites to British students of the Cold War period. This one-time RAF base played host to American nuclear bombers like the B-47 Stratojet, but is best remembered from being one of the two locations that hosted BGM-109G Gryphon cruise missiles in the 1980s.

(The other, RAF Molesworth, is still an active facility)

Known simply as Cruise to many or the GLCM (Ground Launched Cruise Missile or "glick-em"), the Gryphon was the Tomahawk's land-based cousin, developed and deployed as a response to the Soviet deployment of the RT-21M/SS-20 'Saber' intermediate-range ballistic missile, capable of nuking pretty much anywhere in Europe from well within the USSR in under 15 minutes.

While the Gryphon was by no means as fast as that, its ability to fly long distances at low altitudes using terrain matching systems to keep on course meant that the Soviet Union ended up seeing it as a potential first-strike weapon. They invested considerable amounts of time, money and energy looking for evidence of a planned US first strike.

The presence of the Gryphon at any rate was controversial to put it mildly. Anti-nuclear Peace Camps, eventually women-only were set up outside the entrances to Greenham Common to protest and disrupt operations on the site. 

This included breaking into the control tower and reading all the emergency situation documents and writing on the pages to confirm this. When base security didn't show up for five-and-a-half hours, the women started turning the lights on-and-off to get them to show up, because if they just left, the Ministry of Defence would deny it.

A "battle" between the USAF, the police and many locals on one side, with the protestors on the other ensued. Rocks were thrown, statements were cooked up, fences were cut and it became rather difficult for the missile unit to do any exercises outside the base because protestors kept turning up. In the event of an actual war, I suspect those women might have dealt with in a much more lethal way.

Eventually, the INF Treaty of 1987 saw the missiles removed in 1991 for destruction and the base closed shortly afterwards.

It's not exactly easy to tell there was once a military base here were it not from the signs. With most of the concrete removed and used as road ballast, only a tiny proportion of the the runway remains. You actually need aerial photography to spot it now. The pathways are now gravel, following the course of the old taxiways. There are a few structures left over, but not that many - they did a great job of returning a place to nature that could have once destroyed it.

Those are the bunkers - not silos - where the missiles were based, known as the GAMA (GLCM Alert and Maintenance Area) site. 

Declared a scheduled moment in 2003 by English Heritage, they belong to a private owner who uses much of the land to store new cars and the bunkers are themselves behind three layers of fencing, still with their faded Cold War warning signs, although the actual razor/barbed wire has long gone. 

Designed to withstand a direct hit from a conventional bomb or a close proximity nuke, they stand as a reminder of a time in our history we came pretty close to destroying ourselves - today, there are a lot fewer nukes even if there are crazier leaders.

Fans of Star Wars may recognise this place as D'Qar from The Force Awakens - it's also featured in some other stuff like Top Gear.

You can also see a mock-up aircraft (meant to be a C-130 at a smaller scale) used for firefighting training.

The former Control Tower is also present, now open as a visitor centre with a café downstairs - there are displays with stories from all sides involved the base's history. From the top floor, you can see across the site while also looking at real-time information on air activity in the area.

Finally, there is the "Blue Gate", the sole remaining gate on the site, which also had a peace camp nearby, focussed on veganism and New Age stuff.

As I was by the bunkers, I decided as a joke to sing the entirety of the Fischer-Z song "Cruise Missiles". As I finished, I remembered it was 6 August, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. A comedy moment suddenly became rather poignant.

Definitely worth a visit. If nothing else, you'll get some decent exercise out of it.