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hippy
Jonny69
It's where I work. Built in 1940 and was the most advanced wind tunnel in the world. I believe the Spitfire and Hurricane were developed in it. There's word of mouth about Concorde's wing, but I think that may have been done elsewhere (maybe Brooklands). All early aero literature refers to the 2.4m tunnel which is this one. There's another smaller concrete tunnel at the end of the block built at the same time, and a third concrete/steel tunnel built in the 1960s.
The Aero Division here was wrapped up in the 1970s but the three tunnels were still in use by various other companies including Williams and McLaren F1 teams up to about 1997. McLaren fitted the middle tunnel with a rolling road at some point. Then Super Aguri F1, Honda's 'B' team, used the middle tunnel between 2006 and 2008. The three tunnels were taken over by BMT sometime in the 2000s and used up until 2016 when BMT moved out. Then the building stood empty.
I was using the building from 2020 until last summer because I had a couple of projects using the space. Obviously, with my past in F1, I was properly fascinated by them and I've done some time crawling round them.
I always knew there was one old wind tunnel on site because you could see it from the access road, but the end two were completely concealed by facade walls and false office fronts, presumably done so to hide them when they were built during wartime. So being as the Estates team had all changed over the previous two decades, I don't think anyone knew about the end two until we opened the building up looking for work space. Power was actually on when I was in the building but unfortunately I couldn't work out the interlock system so I never managed to get it fired up. Whatever control system BMT had been using wasn't in there any more.
Shame to lose them. The big one you can see, No.7 Wind Tunnel, was very advanced. Could do about 120mph and had boundary layer air curtains, heating, cooling, smoke and a huge rotation stage underneath it.