BATTLE of BRITAIN - LOST AIRFIELDS and emergency landing grounds. These Southern England locations are mostly overbuilt today and shown on the MSFS2020 flight simulator as residential areas, etc. Finding and landing again on those ‘lost BofB’ fields is a fun pastime of mine. There are still today open park or other areas very close by with some characteristics of the original fields. Onto these I practice-land my Spitfire and Hurricane, etc. I want to arrange multiplayer flights to experience these ‘lost’ locations. Here is a quick example:
RAF CROYDON: a Biggin Hill satellite airfield in the Battle of Britain (and pre-war CROYDON AIRPORT). Start at EGKN, RAF Kenley. Make a Northerly heading about 345 degrees. Climb to 1000-1300 ft. Remain configured for an early landing! Just ahead is a bright, built-up area but with a good sized grassed park (today’s Purley Way Playing Fields) to the right of the A23 road leading Northwards. Attempt your landing here; it is quite flat.
Should you fail, circle and repeat and use the tall Shopping Centre buildings, ahead to the right, as an alternative but more challenging approach. From Biggin Hill, the heading is about 290 degrees; try that too.
I have explored several more ‘lost fields/landing grounds’, and some of them were rather difficult to locate now . These are more challenging, lacking significant nearby landmarks.
If enough interest is shown, I could make a list available via a Dropbox public link (no account needed, just bypass their invite to register). Discord name joedoh11945#8380.
MODERATOR EDIT: Removed email address from post to comply with the Code of Conduct
You can easily most of them by using the co-ordinates provided here: List of former Royal Air Force stations - Wikipedia
Personally I find it interesting flying over East Anglia, there are former fields absolutely everywhere and many are still visible from 15,000 ft plus.
If you’re keen on flying an area like here in Suffolk its a shame that we can’t take back the WW2 airfields . I once posted an idea that one day the sim would allow us to go back in time and see the landscape the way it was say in 1940.. at least the airfields. so that we could ‘remember them’ and all those crews that faded away with them. Another love.. Switzerland .. and the unused/repurposed military airfields that are being removed in the sim. Thank goodness some modders are putting them back. They may not be active beyond the emergency helicopters but they make great staging posts for flights around the alps. By the way, if you do try to land at Bentwaters state of the art until 1993) watch out for the tree mid a very bumpy mud runway! Don’t think the A10’s could have coped with that. Mind you a 1/4 second burst on their 20mm would have seen the sapling off bigtime.
That would be very interesting - especially with matching trains/planes/automoblies etc.
It’s much like my idea that one day we might get the ability (through that ‘AI’ that everyone likes to talk about but so often don’t understand) to view historical scenes in Google Streetview, though you can turn back time a year or so in places.
I have just come across this thread looking for something else but I thought that you might be interested in a project I am working on and that is close to release.
I looked into Bassingbourn and it is gone… developed. Was pretty historic. Had family there (top row 3rd from left). There is a monument and perhaps a museum. This was also the location for Memphis Belle. I think there is still a military? base there perhaps using one of the old runways as a foundation for temporary building.
Bassingbourn is still in use as a British Army training centre and so a lot of the permanent airfield buildings, including the hangars are still in use.
Parts of the runways seem to be in use as hard standing for storage and parking.
Superb! So looking forward to this. All I’ve got to do is get MSFS to actually run and I’ll be well away! Kenley is an airfield I’ve visited a few times. Many years ago they were skipping some old stone from one of the demolished buildings, so I have a piece of that legendary airfield in my garden.
Thanks! There has certainly been a lot lost at Kenley, despite it’s overall state of preservation, and it has been fascinating to try and piece it back together.
Very envious that you have a piece in your garden! Do you know which building it was?
Of course I wasted no time and looked at it and was quite impressed. After downloaded you can find it in the MSFS Finder and it shows up with all the details. I gave it a 5* review.
Here are a few views with me flying the B-17. Remarkably they have a send off group at runway 25. The interior of the hanger is detailed but could not figure out how to get out!
