Interesting to find out if there is a UK equivalent. We have a lot of historic airfields, partly as a legacy of the many that were constructed in WW2. Where these have been redeveloped for housing, a clue to the old purpose is often that many of new streets are named for old aircraft.
I used to work at a Plessey [0] site that was built on an old airfield near Christchurch UK, along with a housing state. Street names include Brabazon, Halifax, De Havilland, The Runway, Sunderland, Catalina and Comet. Amusingly, when Siemens acquired Plessey [1], a team of senior Germans visited the site. They presented the management with a book of WW2 Luftwaffe photo-reconnaissance imagery (!) on which the old airfield was featured, saying IIRC "We didn't get you then, but we've got you now!".
> nothing compared to the number in the south east of England!
An honourable mention to RAF Bradwell.
One of the nearest to the coast, it had more than it's fair share of shot up aircraft returning from raids and crash-landing..... and consequently, has the most bizarre war memorial.
"THIS MEMORIAL HAS BEEN/ ERECTED IN MEMORY OF/ THE 121 MEMBERS OF THE/ ALLIED AIR FORCES WHO IN/ ANSWER TO THE CALL OF DUTY/ LEFT THIS AIRFIELD TO FLY/ INTO THE BLUE FOREVER"
Thanks for the link. I couldn't see Woodley in there: where Douglas Bader crashed, the home of Miles Aircraft, and also very close to where I lived as a child. Which led me to this one that might also be of interest:
I stumbled across Wisley Airfield [0] one day - very strange, doing a long bike ride across London, I plotted a route that avoided main roads and suddenly found myself in the middle of a mile-long runway. Right next to the A3 and RHS Gardens at Wisley, not a lot of people know about it. There's a public bridleway across it, no problem for anyone who wants to explore; last time I went past, there was armco across the runway which I think might be to stop illicit drag races.
Here in Sweden we have a lot of (military) airstrips that are incorporated into the public road network.
It's always strange when you bike on a rural road and it broadens to a four lane motorway straight ahead for a kilometer, and then it narrows again and meanders on.
When they were building the M25 motorway around London (about 120 miles for the loop) there were large sections that were built and not yet open to the public - much fun was had on fast motorbikes late at night! Though once the whole thing was open, it all got out of hand [0]. Having said that, back then you weren't risking serious jail term for high 3 figure speeds (on top of the risk of losing your licence, and potentially your life).
In the grass north of the runway, you can see a pattern of scars, all the same length, mostly orthogonal, and a few diagonal. These are almost surely archaeological trial trenches:
Often these are dug to evaluate land before it is built on, in case there is important ancient stuff that will be disrupted or buried. That hints that the airfield may be about to be redeveloped.
You are very likely right; every few years I look it up to see what's happened to such a large chunk of undeveloped land right next to one of the main A roads into London. Here's the current first hit on Google (for me):-
There's a list and history in [1] - apparently in 1945 there were 720 airfields in the UK. Most of them subsequently closed, or converted for civil operation.
The legacy of WW2 means, to this day, the UK has more active airfields than they have modern fighter jets.
The UK and most every other western country. Canada has 500+ airfields and nowhere near that number of jets. The US has over 5000 airfields and, again, nowhere near that number of jets.
We have two major air forces (RAF, USAF) operating in the UK plus a naval air service and army air corps, so an abundance of airfields is unsurprising…
Reminds me of a Spike Milligan anecdote. He attended a reunion from the Italy campaign with the opposing Germans. One of them left a note saying “sorry I missed you last time”
Proving that Germans do actually have a sense of humour.
> Interesting to find out if there is a UK equivalent.
Yes same! I live next to an old airfield that we used to bike around as kids. They've built on some of it over the last couple of decades, but most of the old runway is still there.
They're planning to turn it into a housing estate which is a bit sad... Everyone around here knows the field is there, but most of people don't realise it used to be an airport – at least when I talk to people about it they always seem surprised when I tell them the history. It was a fairly major airport at the time though and strategically important during WWII.
I'm working on a startup at the moment to help people learn about their local history and also share any information and old photos they might have. Old WWII sites like airfields, pillboxes, bunkers, gun batteries, etc I think will be some of the more interesting use cases. Wish I had something to share, but it's still quite early in development. What I will say is that this is a more general problem beyond old airfields – the UK has lots of cool places to explore like abandoned railways, hill forts and long barrows, but none of them are particularly easy to find or get information about.
It is a bit sad from a historic perspective to lose airfields to development. But the opportunity they provide for development has been invaluable. They have played host to science parks, wind/solar farms, particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, film studios and even modern airports.
Now this jogs a memory for me. There was an abandoned airfield in tyrone called Cluntoe Airfield, much of it bumpy and grown over. It didn't deter some of us from trying our our newly-acquired driving skills, even attempting a race which didn't last long due to potholes.
> They presented the management with a book of WW2 Luftwaffe photo-reconnaissance imagery (!) on which the old airfield was featured, saying IIRC "We didn't get you then, but we've got you now!".
And people say the Germans don't have a sense of humour!
One of my German colleagues always responds to the 'no sense of humor' trope with 'we have a sense of humor...you just don't get the joke' in his most over-the-top accent. Always cracks me up.
> They presented the management with a book of WW2 Luftwaffe photo-reconnaissance imagery (!) on which the old airfield was featured, saying IIRC "We didn't get you then, but we've got you now!".
Reminds me of one of those tales of old school air traffic control exchange, where a British Airways pilot and a Frankfurt controller are getting testy with each other, because the BA pilot is asking for more detailed information.
"You are not familiar with Frankfurt? You have not flown here before?"
"Oh, I flew over it plenty in the RAF. Never landed, though."
Thanks, that is exactly it. A photo at the end of the article shows the old airspeed factory. When I moved to the area in 1988 this was owned by Revvo Casters and I had no idea of its actual history. It's currently being redeveloped into something else.
One of the commercial buildings on the old site had a sea vixen (IIRC) as a gate guard but that is long gone.
A related tidbit of trivia: some highways around the world are intended as emergency airfields. It doesn't mean you can just stop traffic and land, you need to prepare the area, e.g. remove dividers, but it can be done relatively fast if needed.
At least in Finland and Sweden those highways-as-emergency-airfields are always in use, no need to prep the area or remove dividers in any way. They are mostly used by the army for practicing, basically the police will just close the road so the army can practice, and when the army is done the road is opened again.
Plus the Swedish Gripen jet fighters are designed to operate off roads rather than requiring long, smooth runways, as well as be main†ained in the field.
Swiss military is a really interesting topic from so many perspectives. With such a high percentage of the population trained and involved in the military the terrain was also supposed to massively aid asymmetrical warfare. Holding mountain passes with light troops if need be.
Pls be advice that depending on local law, you might be better off sticking to the wiki page.
>Nonetheless, the book remains part of the curriculum of the Swiss Army Military Academy at the ETH Zurich as one of the "classics of the history of strategy and the theory of war."[3]
I think if they aren't practicing using highways as runways, then they aren't really runways. They might have been designed at some point.
The US using highways never made sense since unlikely to need them, and have a ton of civil airfields that could be used. Using highways makes a lot of sense for Sweden and Finland that are under threat and doesn't have civil aviation.
https://www.mil-airfields.de/aa-world/highway-strips/index.h... has a list, but I swear I found a YouTube video (which I can't find now, of course) of a highway in South America (I think) that is actually used as a runway for "normal" government flights, and it has numbers painted on the road and everything, and all the police have to do is block the cars.
Here’s one entry that should fascinate young hackers, who think tech company extravagance was a invented by Google in the dotcom era, and exclusive to Silicon Valley:
> As the 1960s progressed, Digital's success found it expanding rapidly, but unable to find office space near its Maynard headquarters. They began purchasing additional campuses all around Boston & initiated their own dedicated helicopter service to ferry people between locations.
> …
> Jack Falvey reported, “The helicopters were not executive perks at DEC; they were used by any & all employees who wanted to avoid traffic in going from place to place.
> This egalitarian policy further emphasized just how different DEC was & how indifferent they appeared to be to the cost of anything.
> In doing [my] case study, we were told that DEC had state-of-the-art video-conferencing facilities that no one used because it was sexier to take the helicopters.”
Helicopter flight costs per passenger were much cheaper back then due to low oil prices, less stringent safety standards, and close to zero regulations regarding noise around helipads.
Maybe as little as a fifth of the cost, inflation adjusted, a similar heli service in 2023 would be.
So not as extravagant as it sounds in the modern context.
True. The 1960s ‘Massachusetts Helicopter Airlines’ flier included on that page indicates that a scheduled half hourly commercial helicopter service from Logan to 128 was charging $10 a ticket - that’s about $70 in today’s money, which, coincidentally, is about what an Uber from Logan to 128 will cost you.
So in terms of extravagance I guess running your own inter-office helicopter service in the 1960s amounts to something similar to running an on demand ride service today. Not ridiculous for a multi campus company to consider doing such a thing.
That said, DEC apparently kept this helicopter thing running right up to the 1990s, through a couple of oil shocks and the invention of the EPA, so… not sure it remained that cheap to run.
> That said, DEC apparently kept this helicopter thing running right up to the 1990s, through a couple of oil shocks and the invention of the EPA, so… not sure it remained that cheap to run.
"First hit's free!" was clearly the oil industry's strategy. Everyone became addicted to the mobility enabled by combustion engines. It's an addiction we're still struggling with to this day, despite the costs.
The (IMO) illegal destruction of that airfield is the reason I've vowed to never again voluntarily spend money in Chicago. I only flew in there a handful of times, but it was amazing to fly in and walk 10 minutes over to the Loop.
Mayor Daley decided he didn't have to follow the law and his city doesn't want my money, so I don't want to force it upon them...
The worst part is: Once an airport gets torn down, it's lost forever. It never gets re-built. And we basically don't build new airports in the USA anymore. Can anyone remember the last time a new airport was built (outside of people building private dirt airstrips on their 20 acre ranch in Idaho)? As population centers shift and housing gets built, people move in next to noisy airports and then say to themselves "Holy shit, I moved next to an airport and it's loud. How could I have known? Surely this is the airport's fault!" and they go complain to their city.
A little public airport with a nice asphalt runway in my hometown recently went up for sale, and the price was within striking distance of what I could afford as an investment, but I chickened out and failed to pull the trigger. It would have meant moving across the country to manage it and convincing my company to let me work remotely (this was just before COVID when WFH suddenly became normalized). Sadly some shitty developer bought the plot and promptly closed the runway and facilities so he could build whatever shit he's going to build. Big regret.
>As population centers shift and housing gets built, people move in next to noisy airports and then say to themselves "Holy shit, I moved next to an airport and it's loud. How could I have known? Surely this is the airport's fault!" and they go complain to their city.
Harrison Ford makes a similar case about KSMO and why it's important to continue investing in general aviation.
>“Of course then they do a survey among Santa Monica voters. ‘What are the ten things that most need to be done?’ Number ten on their list is to get rid of the airport. But number one on their list is traffic congestion. [Lowers chin, raises eyebrows, points at me.] I rest my case.”
The airport is number one on the city COUNCIL's list. I think Harrison is mistaken here: The airport didn't even MAKE the list in a survey of Santa Monica citizens. Many of them don't even know the airport exists.
When asked directly about the airport, the majority of SM citizens SUPPORT it. The city has repeatedly commissioned studies (at taxpayer expense of course), and those have repeatedly indicated that the best course of action is keeping the airport open.
Needless to say, the city council never mentions these studies. They're currently blowing loads of money on consulting firms to perpetuate this absurd lie that the airport land will be turned into a giant park. They admitted years ago that there is, and will be, no money to build any such thing. And that was BEFORE their current "budget crisis." The sham is simply a rallying cry for land speculators, developers, and the city council that they own.
> "Holy shit, I moved next to an airport and it's loud. How could I have known? Surely this is the airport's fault!"
I think it's slightly worse than that. People buy a property for cheap[er than elsewhere] because it's close to an airport and then complain that their house is impacted by the noise from the airport and want to close the airport.
Yep. These assholes aren't even legitimate NIMBYs; they're land-speculating trash masquerading as NIMBYs.
I went to an anti-SMO protest just to keep apprised of their arguments. Talk about a disgusting spectacle: a bunch of rich white people pretending to be outraged about an airport they claim is only used by rich white people. All so they can steal an irreplaceable resource from their neighbors, the region, the nation, and their own children.
The thing is, nothing was done with Meigs for years. Even today there's only a half-assed performance venue of some sort at one end.
And now Chicago has illegally given public parkland on the lakefront to the Obama Foundation to build the "Obama Center," cutting down trees and taking land away from the lakefront park. While the lawsuit over that was in process, I wrote to the Obamas and suggested making a deal with the city to acquire all of Northerly Island to build the Obama Center there, on the condition that the runway be restored and reopened. It would have been perfect. The building planned for the center is even a tower; it could have had been the control tower at the top.
The Obama center is supposed to inspire wonder and hope and ambition, according to their PR, which heavily features children. What's more inspirational than the magic of aviation? Kids love to watch planes. The Obama Airport.
This suggestion was, of course, ignored. Obama lost a huge amount of respect in my book for stealing from the people of Chicago and failing to act on this idea (if anyone even forwarded it). What a lost opportunity for all.
Oh yeah, when Rahm Emmanuel was asked about re-opening Meigs, Mr. Hard-Ass folded and simpered that he didn't want to offend the Daley (crime) family.
Next up on the list of crimes against aviation and The People will be the seizure and destruction of Santa Monica Airport. This one is an even bigger betrayal, since it was federal land deeded to SM after WWII with the condition that it always be an airport. Coincidentally, Obama's lame-duck outgoing FAA administrator, Michael Huerta, struck a secret, illegal, back-room deal with someone in the Santa Monica city council to turn this public airport over to local hack politicians to sell off to developers. The circumstances of this deal have never been revealed, and airport supporters have run out of legal options on contesting it.
This disgusting betrayal of the FAA's duty represents just one more way the USA is going backward and giving up on the ambitions and dreams that made it great. Everything, it seems, is up for a one-time sale for permanent destruction and loss.
When I lived in Chicago I generally hated how Daley operated, but on this one I was on his side. It was a silly use of space and served practically no one amidst a giant and bustling city.
Removing the field would have been hung up in endless petty and bad-faith lawsuits. On principle I'm not sure I agree with what he did, but in practice I 100% supported it.
Incredible thing to hold a decades long grudge over. It's a park, music venue, nature preserve, and part of the museum campus now. All of which I have to assume is better for the residents than an airport, however visitors may feel about it.
If that's what the residents want and they're okay having paid the fines for the city's illegal actions, I'm happy to let them enjoy the park without crowding it by my presence or tourism money.
Tangentially related: after Izhma Airfield (in Komi Republic, Russia) was closed to fixed-wing aircraft, its supervisor still continued to do maintenance on the airstrip, even through it was no longer needed.
Then, 7 years later, an airliner lost power in that area, and the pilots were surprised to find a perfectly functional runway. The plane landed with no injuries.
Floyd Bennett[0] is a nice abandoned airport to visit. It's a friendly bike ride from many parts of Brooklyn and they still have many of the original buildings. It's worth the afternoon trip.
This is great! Some of the listed Oregon airfields aren't foo far from me, so I might have to pay them a visit.
I'm an avid researcher of abandoned locations and their histories. There is nothing quite like immersing yourself in the past, especially if you can stand in the location for yourself. Imagine all the paths that intersected there; the lives that were changed. Even the smallest trace you leave behind may be rediscovered by someone in the future, and they may wonder what your life was like. They may even be connected to you in some way. Perhaps this trace is what leads them to discover that connection.
One that I guess would fit into the "little known" category would be Bear Pen Airport[1] in Brunswick County NC. The facility is owned by the NC Forestry Service for use in firefighting efforts. But as far as I know it's very rarely (if ever) used anymore. As the linked notes say:
- FACILITY USED BY NC FOREST SVC FOR FIRE CONTROL.
- NOT MAINTAINED DURING OFF SEASON; USE NOT RECOMMENDED DURING FIRE SEASON.
I grew up near one of these [0]. My friends and I would go to the air traffic control hut just to hang out and watch planes. There was also a vending machine where we could buy soda (enticing for kids in a rural area with not many services). The airstrip had a role to play in WWII apparently something that was mentioned when developers wanted to build a large condo complex there and local opposition mounted to scuttle the project (NIMBY in retrospect). I remember an accident when two planes landed too close together if memory serves correct and killed one of the pilots. Anyway, I loved that little airport checking out the parked Cessna's and watching planes land and take off. The landing flight path was right above our house. Over the years the trees grew taller and we could no longer see the landing strip from our house. The red fuel towers were there until recently (long after the airport closed, probably had toxic waste that required elaborate cleanup), but apparently no longer there[1]. Good times...
My parents worked at the defense contractor company on that site, E-Systems, for 30 years. I learned more about what they did there from this site today than I ever learned from them!
Pretty cool. I lived out that way for a bit in the early 2010s (Abrams + Munger). I take it you're from Garland originally, or did you grow up in the city?
Very nice site. The northwest Sacramento, CA page has Natomas Field where I used to hang out all the time and fly amazing planes from. The flying club had a Decathlon for acrobatics, a Piper Cub for cruising low and slow, and a Bonanza for taking trips, plus many other aircraft. So much fun. It was so sad when the houses were built there and they closed the airport around 2000.
It's always fun with this site pops up. I discovered a new tidbit about the old Menominee Airport, MI [0]
There's a park along US-2 that I've driven past called "Airport Park" [1]. It made little sense to me as there's nothing but woods around it and there's a airport in the town. Turns out, that park's name is still a holdover from when there was an actual airport there.
It has a credible claim to operating since around 1900, which makes it very old for a California airport. The owner (Lyman Gilmore) has a less-than-credible claim to flying an airplane in 1902, a year before the Wright Bros. It's a good story even if it's perhaps not true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Gilmore
The local school built near the old airfield has a windsock as a commemoration.
My former employer, the Naval Air Development Center in Warminster PA is listed. The one-time Naval base once supported a centrifuge (as mentioned in the listing) used to subject future astronauts to high G levels. What became of the centrifuge is somewhat unexpected, as described in this little blog post:
Almost abandoned, now revived but relatively unknown, one of my favourites is the Mungalalu Truscott Airbase in northern Australia, used during WWII for long range bombing of Japanese oil wells and depots in SE Asia.
Another in the north is Gorrie Airfield from WWII; now used as a boondocking/free-camping spot. We camped on it driving south from Katherine last month - great, flat area with lots of room for people to spread out. There would've been 10-20 camping rigs set up.
One guy I worked with started a glider club. Turns out they needed a runway. So they made one out of an old farmers field. No real runway just an empty field cut low and a small shack at the end of the run way to fix things. "I am going to name it an international something, not sure what". Few years later I asked him if they gave him his international name. They had! So this little random field is an 'international' airport.
Aw sorry dude it was like 20 years ago at this point. I do remember it started with an I and it was in the middle of North Carolina near Advance. They may have closed it since then.
Could it have been the Northbrook International Ultraport Ultralight Airport? It gets pretty close to your description: one grass runway, listed as privately owned by a James K. Peeler and nestled in underneath the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport's airspace in North Carolina.
Wow, this is a great blast from the past. I grew up on the road where this airport http://www.airfields-freeman.com/MA/Airfields_MA_C.htm#norfo... was. You would walk right out our front door and the field with runways was right in front of you. I vividly remember being about 6-7 years old (so, 1993-1994) and seeing a plane crash in the field. Was hoping to find mention of it but didn't see any. Either way, total nostalgia flood. Simpler times. Thanks OP!
So much cool info and photos on that site. I was able to find the (abandoned at the time) runway a mile from my house that we used to ride bikes on as a kid. I had no idea the infrastructure that had been there at one time.
And yet, every time it's reposted, new eyes will see it; this is the same problem that e.g. Reddit has, it's full of reposts, but there's so many posts that nobody will ever actually go down the list and read all previous posts.
Reposts are an issue on low-volume sites, but HN is not a low volume site. Reposts are also allowed, since reposts done on different times or times of the week can attract a lot more comments, as proven by the search link that shows just one of the 6 reposts having more than one comment.
I posted the list, so people can also see when it was commented the most, I am not advocating "do not post duplicates", just making an effort to show that this specific site/article had been discussed more than once so if you are interested maybe you'd like to check the old threads.
(btw, I thought that in the past "duplicates" would be converted to automatic +1 to older entries of the same item? Has this changed? am I misremembering?)
> I thought that in the past "duplicates" would be converted to automatic +1 to older entries of the same item?
You are definitely correct about that. Several times recently, I have submitted articles and found myself on a recent submission of the same article (which presumably got a +1 as a result).
Maybe enough time elapsed since the last submission of this article that this didn't happen?
In any case, we can all enjoy this cool site that documents so much aviation history.
For an aviation history enthusiast like me, a site like this is always worth another look.
I live on the San Francisco Peninsula. I'd heard that there had been little airports up and down the peninsula, but I didn't know much about them. This page brought them to life:
Slightly off-topic: Take a note web developer, you see there is a fully functional site with images, links, and everything with no or minimum js needed, it looks authentic and fast to browse, pretty much 90% of the cases you don’t need most of the stuff you shove into visitors faces, grapghQL node_modules vite etc.. look at this! https://roadmap.sh/frontend
I believe the lowest power aircraft engine currently in production is the Swedish Radne Raket 120 at the manufacturer's claimed output of 14 hp. However, Wikipedia suggests that the only fixed-wing aircraft using this powerplant requires two of of them, therefore adding up to 28 hp.
If we're going to stay away from motor paragliders and other ultralights then you've still got the flight sustainer single seat gliders such as the Diana 2 which take off with an engine with peak 35hp power.
Cool, I'm in the Seattle area and didn't know of that one either. Do you have any background on it? I run a similar website to catalog all current airports, but also collect info on closed airports for historical purposes. I added a page for it here: https://pirep.io/airports/UNM96. If there's any info to document on it that would be wonderful.
It's a well known hiking area on the island. It's been part of the Saratoga Woods public park since it was bought by the land conservancy in ~2001. It was noted as abandoned at the time. The main part of the park is second growth, but the area around the airstrip looks to be mainly smaller trees, so possibly logged later, post early Seattle logging boom times.
Apparently, my hometown had an airfield associated with the local country club. I was pretty shocked to see pictures of people with nice cars at a time when my great grandfather was still traveling to town with a mule and buggy. Wow.
I live near the site of the old Lowry AFB in suburban Denver. I remember when the base was shut down, but not much beyond that because I was pretty young. Those photos of when it was in operation are incredible. Thank you for sharing!
My point is: if there was a search field I could confirm the airfield’s absence. If CA was more hierarchical or clearly organized I could see whether or not the airfield is present or absent. Also, it’s for little used airfields too, which this one probably qualifies.
I used to work at a Plessey [0] site that was built on an old airfield near Christchurch UK, along with a housing state. Street names include Brabazon, Halifax, De Havilland, The Runway, Sunderland, Catalina and Comet. Amusingly, when Siemens acquired Plessey [1], a team of senior Germans visited the site. They presented the management with a book of WW2 Luftwaffe photo-reconnaissance imagery (!) on which the old airfield was featured, saying IIRC "We didn't get you then, but we've got you now!".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessey
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plessey#GEC_Siemens_takeover