All Hallows, Kent: A Second World War Oil QF Bombing Decoy
Author(s): Fiona Small
Situated in the Allhallows Marshes Hoo Peninsula, Medway, Kent are the well preserved remains of a Second World War QF P-Series oil bombing decoy. This is one of a series of decoy sites built across the country designed to draw enemy attack away from towns, airfields, factories and fuel storage facilities across Britain. The Allhallows decoy was one of eleven specialised oil QF sites completed between 1940 and 1941 built specifically to protect oil storage facilities. This site was constructed to draw enemy raids from the extensive oil storage depots 2 km to the south on the Isle of Grain. Oil QF decoys were designed to burn large quantities of fuel oil in a variety of brick or clay lined pools and channels variously shaped to simulate burning fuel storage tanks and installations targeted by bombs when seen from the air. Only two of the original 11 oil QF decoys are known to survive – the Allhallows site and Shell Haven, Fobbing in Essex. Aerial photographs taken in September 2013 and March 2014 suggests that all the main structures of the Allhallows decoy, including oil pools and associated structures and the remote control buildings ,are still extant, in varying states of preservation.
- Report Number:
- 8/2014
- Series:
- Research Report
- Pages:
- 19
- Keywords:
- Modern Bombing Decoy
