Government joins with English Heritage to put nuclear bunkers at RAF Upper Heyford on list of protected national monuments

Some of the most sinister historic monuments in Britain, a set of hardened concrete bunkers built to shelter American nuclear bombers, are to be protected and preserved, it has been announced.

A planning inquiry into the future development of Upper Heyford, near Bicester, has accepted the English Heritage argument that the site is one of the best preserved Cold War landscapes in Britain. The government has now agreed that the heart of the complex, which is on the Schedule of Monuments with sites such as Stonehenge, should be protected from development.

Andy Brown, regional director of English Heritage, who gave evidence at the enquiry, said: "The decision to safeguard these structures brings England's cold war heritage into the mainstream, alongside the Georgian and Victorian buildings that people more often think of as our architectural heritage.

"I hope this is a conservation milestone, which will mark the cold war being embraced as a legitimate part of our heritage."

Simon Thurley, the chief executive, agreed: "To anyone over 50, the cold war is too recent to feel like history, but to 17-year-olds it is just as historic as Napoleon," he said. "Within one minute [of the alert] planes could have been fired up; in six minutes they could be bombing Moscow."

In the late 1950s and 1960s, at the height of the cold war, the old first world war airstrip at Upper Heyford was expanded. The runway was first strengthened, then extended to 2.5 miles to take B52 Bombers. The hardened aircraft shelters, were added in 1967, after the Six Day War, when Israel destroyed much of the Egyptian airforce on the ground. The hangars were protected by motorised 85-tonne doors, and were designed so that at least one nuclear bomber could be kept running inside, night and day. One technician who forgot to wear his ear protectors as an F111 ignited its engines lost his hearing permanently.

A small American town grew up around the base, marked out by US-style hydrants on every street corner, complete with a supermarket – almost unheard-of in Britain at the time – selling delicacies such as Hersey bars and Oreo biscuits.

Most of the equipment and fittings, and anything regarded as sensitive, was stripped out when the Americans finally handed the base back to the British in 1994. But the command rooms survive, protected by six inch thick steel doors, with the names of the last crews written up in chinagraph pencil, and an American style burger bar complete with the last menu specials. A more grim sight also remains: the outdoor showers designed to wash off nuclear fallout.

Some of the buildings will continue in light industrial use; others will be preserved as a museum; and there will be some housing development away from the most sensitive part of the site. Schoolgroups are already frequent visitors, eager to examine the structures that could have ended the world in a matter of minutes.