Secret war plan would have flattened Worcester

Plans to sacrifice one of England's oldest cathedral cities in the event of a German invasion during the Second World War have been discovered by archaeologists recording the last surviving remnants of home defence works.

Plans to sacrifice one of England's oldest cathedral cities in the event of a German invasion during the Second World War have been discovered by archaeologists recording the last surviving remnants of home defence works.

Worcester, with its medieval cathedral, Queen Anne guildhall and narrow streets of half-timbered houses, would have been flattened by Britain's Secret Army, turning the area into a tank trap to hold up a German advance, which the authorities expected to be launched from the west.

It would have been the first military action to have taken place in the city since the 17th century, when royalist gunners fired salvoes from Fort Royal Hill overlooking the cathedral in the last battle of the Civil War to give Charles II the chance to escape to France.

The plans for the second Battle of Worcester were found by a team of amateur researchers working with the Worcestershire County Council's archaeological service on the Second World War project organised by the Council for British Archaeology.

They discovered the bases and battle plans of six local units of the Secret Army, the underground militia of civilians who would have formed the core of the resistance and whose existence has only recently been officially acknowledged.

The team of researchers examined dozens of "pill" boxes and other surviving fortifications in fields and on hilltops in the countryside around Worcester and collected first-hand evidence from people who remembered the war.

The researchers noticed that the pill boxes and other defence works in the area were nearly all facing towards the west and they found the remnants of glider traps designed to wreck landings by airborne German paratroops. Malcolm Atkin, the county archaeology officer, said: "Worcester was intended to be a centre of resistance to give the British Army time to regroup and is unlikely to have survived the inevitable blitzkrieg. It had always been assumed that Worcestershire would have been a backwater during an invasion, but our discoveries show it would actually have been on the front line.

"Although the main invasion would probably have been across the English Channel, the authorities feared a second attack along the Bristol Channel and through Wales. The government was also worried which side the Irish Republic might have supported, so the defence of the county was taken very seriously."

Local Home Guard units would have played a vital part in the operation and were expected to hold out for at least 48 hours, but their firepower would have been vastly inferior to that of the invaders. Their weapons included a type of antiquated artillery piece, which had originally seen service during the 19th century in the first of the Royal Navy's iron-clad battleships.

Another piece was the amazingly crude "blacker bombard" or "spigot mortar", an anti-tank weapon fired with black powder explosive that was first used in the Middle Ages. This weapon had the drawback that when a shell hit its target, the fins were liable to fly backwards along the original trajectory and kill the firer.

The county archaeology service is planning to produce a booklet about the finds and is documenting the various sites found by the researchers so they can be included in the official national Sites and Monuments Record.