Wide Runway

[chevvron]

Bored at work today, so I was wondering; any theories as to why the runway at Shobdon was built so wide? It appears to be 300ft/90m paved width instead of the standard wartime 150ft/45m., and it's in the wrong part if the country to be an emergency runway in the same way as Manston, Woodbridge and Carnaby. Course I know only the central 18m is licenced and maintained nowadays, but the original runway is easily discernable on googlearth.

[excrab]

It was used during the war as a glider pilot training field. Could be it needed to be wider to allow more space for trainee pilots, or for tugs towing multiple gliders. Just a guess.

[Mechta]

An ex-Shackleton pilot recounted to me a story of flying virtually the length of the Britsh Isles to find an airfield with decent visability. Bearing this in mind, could Shobdon have been built to allow for the fact that Eastern England might get fogged in, and aircraft returing from a raid might have to go considerably further to put down? The wide runway would allow more aircraft to land even if one partially blocked the runway.

[chevvron]

Well the other three airfields I mentioned were designed with this in mind; certainly Manston had FIDO and probably the other two did. Was it installed at Shobdon?

[Kieron Kirk]

No FIDO at Shobdon.

Link below gives a history.

Shobdon Aerodrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shobdon_Aerodrome)

Ciarain.

[Phileas Fogg]

St. Mawgan has, and RAE Bedford/Thurleigh did have, 300ft wide runway(s).

[Atcham Tower]

Excrab's guess is absolutely right. About 3 mins into this clip is a sequence that may have been filmed at Shobdon from the south side where the wartime tower used to be. Still not proven.

YouTube - General Aircraft G.A.L. 48 Hotspur combat assault glider (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-0nEMOc2Gk)

[chevvron]

Phileas; there are many 300ft post war runways including Boscombe Down and Filton, not forgetting Heathrow! It's unusual to get one that was apparently built prior to 1945 and that looks to be less than 9000ft long. I honestly don't know what length Shobdon was originally but from the googlearth photo I would guess maybe 5000 or 6000ft

[ExAscoteer]

My late Father was at Shobdon in July 1945 post Op VARSITY flying Hotspurs on a Refresher Course / Conversion to First Pilot status, prior to the work up for the planned invasion of Japan.

The SOP at Shobdon was to have take offs and landings going on in parallel. There had previously been problems at Shobdon with water-logging of the airfield so the hard runway was constructed of a width capable of catering for parallel take offs and landings.

[chevvron]

Perfect that answers my question!

[ExAscoteer]

Excrab's guess is absolutely right. About 3 mins into this clip is a sequence that may have been filmed at Shobdon from the south side where the wartime tower used to be. Still not proven.
That's not Shobdon. Looks more like Haddenham (Thame) to me.

[ExAscoteer]

Chevron,

Happy I could help. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/thumbs.gif

[ExAscoteer]

Further to what has been posited earlier Shobdon was not built as a 'Div' airfield, it was built as a purpose built Glider training airfield.

The idea being that a glider training airfield needed to be away from 'normal' ops/training owing to the lack of manoeuvrebility of the wartime gliders coupled with the fact that (initially) it was used for training ab initio glider pilots.