 When the AI team arrived on 5 November 1939 , they found themselves being housed in a disused hangar with no office space . A small amount of relief was found by using abandoned Heyford wings as partitions , but this proved largely useless as the weather turned cold . As the main doors of the hangar were normally left open during the day , it was often too cold to hold a screwdriver . Bowen complained that the conditions " would have produced a riot in a prison farm . " 
