Admiralty Tunnel
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Admiralty Tunnel is a tunnel in
Gibraltar ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song = "Gibraltar Anthem" , image_map = Gibraltar location in Europe.svg , map_alt = Location of Gibraltar in Europe , map_caption = United Kingdom shown in pale green , mapsize = , image_map2 = Gibr ...
.Eley, Colonel D.M. (1957). ''The Gibraltar Tunnels''. The tunnel was used for the purpose of bringing stone from the east side. During the Second World War the tunnel contained an operations centre where
Dwight Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War I ...
planned
Operation Torch Operation Torch (8 November 1942 – 16 November 1942) was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while al ...
. , the operations centre is used to house a secure data facility.


History

The new navy base was begun in 1893, but for some time the stone was brought by barge from the east side of the rock to Gibraltar Harbour on the west side. The tunnel allowed stone from the quarries on the east side to be brought via a one-metre
narrow gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller struct ...
to help construct the navy base on the west side. It is the only tunnel that runs from east to the west of the
Rock of Gibraltar The Rock of Gibraltar (from the Arabic name Jabel-al-Tariq) is a monolithic limestone promontory located in the British territory of Gibraltar, near the southwestern tip of Europe on the Iberian Peninsula, and near the entrance to the Medite ...
, and during World War II the tunnel was reworked and a 3,000-square-metre area roughly halfway down it became a state-of-the-art communications centre. This Allied Command Headquarters centre was protected from enemy bombs by metres of rock in every direction and contained the board room where the invasion of North Africa (
Operation Torch Operation Torch (8 November 1942 – 16 November 1942) was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while al ...
) was planned by Dwight Eisenhower. As a result, Eisenhower not only commanded the operation, but he was the first non-British person to command Gibraltar in 200 years. It had its own systems for fresh air, electricity, lighting and communication links to the outside world. The space now contains a very secure data storage facility previously owned by Vault Technology Services and now operated by ''Continent 8''.Directions to ...
Continent 8 Technologies - Gibraltar, accessed April 2013
The size of the data storage facility is , which is split up into 80 separate rooms. It is not open to the public but it is possible to see from one end to the other and thus to observe how straight the tunnel is. The west end of the tunnel is accessible from Queensway.


References

{{Streets in Gibraltar Tunnels in Gibraltar