Aerial Photo of Brockworth

[james101]

Can anyone shed any light on this photo? It's an aerial photo of Brockworth, taken around 1945/1950, but there doesn't appear to be any sign of the Gloster Aircraft Company's runway which was on this sight.

Matching up the photo with a current one verifies the site is correct. Did they use to take off and land on a grass strip then?

[DeepestSouth]

IIRC, nearly all flying was carried out at Hucclecote after the late 1920s, but I may be wrong. That said, I think I read somewhere that the E28/39 first became airborne, albeit only briefly, at Brockworth, before making it's first official flight at Cranwell.

[longer ron]

Brockworth/Hucclecote ...same place are they not ??
If you look on G Earth the remains of a hard runway are very clear,must have been built later than the original posters photo.
regards LR

[izod tester]

James,

Your photograph must have been taken earlier than 1943, the runway was built then. In fact, it is earlier than 1939. If you look at the attached image which was taken by the Germans in 1939, you can see the new No 2 works on the right hand side where your photograph has just fields. (Unless the no 2 works are incredibly well camouflaged in your picture. :)

http://www.northwood-green.net/images/hucclecote1939.jpg

[HighTow]

I mentioned this in the same thread on another forum. It's a censored RAF picture I believe from the set that was made available post war to Ordnance Survey and the like to update their maps. In many cases the photos were doctored to either completely hide or obscure what was there. In this case I would guess that the doctoring of the image was done so as to hide the second site and runway but to try and make the photo represent the site prior to the war and hence match any existing photos. I believe the photos held by National Heritage in Swindon are the *original* uncensored versions from which the censored versions were created from.