Starfish site

Colonel John Turner, an engineer and retired Air Ministry officer, was tasked, in September 1939, with establishing a broad range of day and night decoys to mislead enemy bombers.

[2] In response to the Germans' use of incendiary bombs, Turner added fires to the 'Q' Sites, dubbing them Q-Fire or QF, to add to their plausibility.

[2][3] Following the night bombing of Coventry, in early November 1940, the decoy programme was expanded to include towns and cities; the Air Ministry initially ordered sites to be set up for Bristol, Crewe, Derby, London, Manchester, Middlesbrough and Sheffield.

[7][a] One of the first decoy sites was constructed on Black Down on the Mendip Hills;[b] it was code-named "Starfish", derived from Turner's original SF code, and built to protect the nearby city of Bristol.

In addition, glow boxes were used to simulate the streets and railways of Bristol; the light bulbs were powered by electrical generators turned by Coventry Climax petrol engines contained in two bunkers.

[c] Clusters of impressions where basket fires once stood, bounded by fire-break trenches, covered much of the area seen in Second World War photographs, and a prominent structure near the site may have been the decoy control bunker.

[6][15][17][e] A 1992 archaeological survey of the Mendip Hills did not identify surviving bomb craters on the Black Down site (the original "Starfish"), despite claims of their existence.