Source/Archive record SCH8247 - Nine Thousand Miles of Concrete

This report looks at the intricate subject of Second World War temporary airfields; it briefly examines the planning, design and construction of airfield landscapes, the numbers and types built, and the reasons for their post-war demise. Temporary airfields in England have been fading from the landscape at an alarming rate, so much so, that only a fragment of the infrastructure and pavements survive today and much of this has disappeared without proper recording. The report was commissioned by English Heritage as part of the National Heritage Protection Plan (project 6370). There are two aims: • To list and assess the current condition of Second World War temporary airfields • To identify the best surviving temporary airfield landscapes and building complexes. What has become apparent whilst carrying out the research for this document is the fact that in many cases it can be very difficult to define a temporary airfield. This is largely because pre-war permanent stations were constructed in several phases which were carried out during peacetime as well as wartime. They may have started out as grass airfields but the majority ended up with hard-surface runways and aircraft hardstandings, constructed to the same standards as duration-only stations. For the same reasons the planning and design of pre-war station infrastructure may have started out as non-dispersed compact arrangements, but over the course of the war many of these were expanded using the dispersal principle.