It lacks the windswept beauty of Stonehenge or the Tower of London's regal history but that hasn’t stopped a 20-year-old bunker left obsolete by the fall of the Berlin Wall from joining those two landmarks on Britain's fabled list of historic gems.Appearing to be little more than a weed-strewn hill adjacent to one of Europe's longest runways, "Magic Mountain" was built to ensure that U.S. spy planes could keep flying over Europe in any eventuality — including World War III.The subterranean structure, designed to survive a direct nuclear attack, was conceived to be a "key NATO asset" as the decades-long showdown between Western and Soviet forces rumbled on. But just months after it was completed in 1989 at a cost of $69 million, thawing East-West relations made the American-built facility a white elephant.Brits put Cold War bunker on preservation list
It lacks the windswept beauty of Stonehenge or the Tower of London's regal history but that hasn’t stopped a 20-year-old bunker left obsolete by the fall of the Berlin Wall from joining those two landmarks on Britain's fabled list of historic gems.Appearing to be little more than a weed-strewn hill adjacent to one of Europe's longest runways, "Magic Mountain" was built to ensure that U.S. spy planes could keep flying over Europe in any eventuality — including World War III.The subterranean structure, designed to survive a direct nuclear attack, was conceived to be a "key NATO asset" as the decades-long showdown between Western and Soviet forces rumbled on. But just months after it was completed in 1989 at a cost of $69 million, thawing East-West relations made the American-built facility a white elephant.
