One of our airfields is missing!

[Bored987]

In the interests of procrastination (not packing up the house to move) I was looking at Google Earth yesterday. I noticed that you can view historic aerial photos - more specifically a view of a lot of the UK from December 1945.

This was presumably a bomb damage / unexploded bomb survey? Having looked at a few places I knew I went to have a look at Biggin Hill airfield where I used to fly from - only to find it not there.

It's been very carefully cut out and replaced with an approximation of what the maps of the day showed to cover up the airfield's existence. You can see the cut lines if you look closely (look just north of Leaves Green and it cuts across the road and back to form a small tab).

On further inspection (you can tell I really should be doing something else) and having downloaded the Extended Defence of Britain Project markers I noticed that almost all the airfields & AA guns around London have been very carefully replaced with innocuous looking fields or covered by moderatly convincing clouds with no shadows on the ground (e.g. N51*23'36.23", E0*03'58.61"). The same is true of the area around Oxford but around Cambridge the airfields can be seen in all their glory!

Does anyone know who the photos were originally for and why they were censored so carefully (surely not for public release?).

Please help me get back to useful work with any suggestions because it's annoying me!

Ta
:ugh:

[trident3A]

I can see Elstree on the 1945 map

[treadigraph]

I was looking at this a few days ago and could see Kenley and Croydon - think it was 1945. Can't see it at work unfortunately! :{

[Bored987]

The ones that are left all look like grass strips. A few that definatly aren't there (based on Defence of Britain locations & the fact they ARE there in modern views) Biggin, Halton, Oakley, Westcolt, Little Horwood, Finmere, Upper Heyford, Cranfield, Podington, Harrington & Half Penny Green. Haven't looked to see if they've been cut out like Biggin. Did they all have paved runways?
The defence of britain markers are here if your interested:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=966458&filename=Extended%20Defence%20of%20Britain%2006.kmz

There are a suspicious number of patriotic clouds hiding AA guns!
(Right, back to something useful)

[chevvron]

Well up to about 1967 (correct me if I'm wrong) 1 Inch Ordnance Survey maps (prior to their being re-configured as 1:50,000) didn't show military airfields, (but did show civil ones,) with open fields - presumably as they were before the airfields were built - being shown in their place, so maybe the aerial photos were for the OS to copy from?

[26er]

Tried to look at RNAS Ford on Google Earth the other day only to see it had been "whited out", presumably to stop evil chaps from studying the layout of the prison. It didn't prevent the inmates from burning it and in any case it was subsequently shown in detail on the TV news reports.

[HighTow]

I've discussed this at length on this and various other forums but a quick summary. The photos used by Google Earth et. al are from various sources, most notably a set compiled by Ordnance Survey post-war and sourced from censored pictures supplied by the RAF. Ordnance Survey used these photos to update their commercial publicly available maps. The airfield censorship depends on the year that the original RAF photo was taken and the source, for example RAF Grove has to top half of the airfield missing as that sortie was censored but a later one wasn't which shows the bottom. As you've spotted, airfields and facilities to be hidden are generally masked by clipping and photo retouching the area to show the features that existed pre-war. In the case of some HAA sites, they are simply obscured by convenient clouds. The Government even went as far as to change the policy of land use classification on OS maps. With the re-arming of Germany in the 30's, the government required OS to remove details of buildings and infrastructure of military sites and simply label them as "aerodrome". For new sites, they simply weren't added. In most cases, the classification colour of red was swapped for the less obvious pasture green. This went on into the 60's and even abandoned WWII airfields never showed any detail. You could write a book on the subject of map censorship to hide airfields. :)

[Agaricus bisporus]

Well, censorship exists in the OS right up to the present time (or at least, up to 8-10 years ago when it was demolished), as the gigantic "Elephant's Cage" VLF (??) antenna array at RAF Chicksands nr Bedford never appeared on the 50Thou series despite being about as large and visible a County landmark as the hangars at Cardington. It was even illuminated at night!

[Bored987]

Thanks very much HighTow, sorry to get you to repeat it for me. I couldn't work out who it had been censored for. The use of clouds to hide areas makes it rather obvious where (if not what) sensitive sites are, which suggests it wasn't publicly available (or rather that it wasn't censored for it's intelligence value to foreign govenrmants who could easily check).

With reference to Biggin: until the 1930s OS map the area appears much as it always had, then in 1930 the large field to the south west (where the runways cross now) starts to get bigger. In the 1940s the buildings in the middle disappear and the runway layout is first shown in the 1960s after it had become a civil airfield.

The only difference from the maps is that the large field (WWI airfield site?) appears to have been split into differently shaded smaller ones in the photo to make it less conspicuous in the surrounding countryside. The photo has clearly been put together to match the last map issue, although interestingly the next map issued does not match this photo as the buildings and many of the fields have been removed.

Interesting history - both the historic images and also the historic censorship. Should I tell Julian Assange about it?

[pkam]

During my time in the Royal Air Force,till 1978. in a previous life I recall that in each Supply Squadron R&D there was poster about 4 ft high that was a UK map showing all Airfields complete with names, showing runway plan. Active bases as a full circle, dis-used as a dashed circle going back to the year dot. Always meant to liberate one but never managed it.
Do MOD keep copies of long defunct forms?

[Geezers of Nazareth]

Slightly related ... Does the AWRE at Aldermaston still appear on OS maps as 'fields'?

(caveat: I haven't checked recently ... must take a look on Google Earth some day).

[treadigraph]

On the 1/25000 OS map, AWRE is shown and marked as a "depot". Take a look on line with Bing Maps.

Another facility nearby is shown and even more enigmatic!

[anjs]

So is the site just off the m4

[treadigraph]

AWRE? No.

(And I should have said the other site is equally enigmatic!)

[anjs]

The one thats imaginitivly signed as a Works Unit

[Morris542]

I know that you can have a go at flight simulator in Google Earth but this is something I had not heard of! Can someone tell me how to view these older photos?

[wiggy]

Zoom in on your chosen spot, select "view" from the menu at the top, and in the drop down you should see "historical imagery". Click on that and you'll get a slider which allows you to select your chosen date. Not all areas have the imagery from as far back as WW2, Southern England is well covered, otherwise it major cities such as Paris do - and even Paris only has partial coverage.

[treadigraph]

The one thats imaginitivly signed as a Works Unit


Think I know where you mean, that's the other facility! :ok:

[chevvron]

Why be so secretive? The identity is in the public domain on aeronautical charts and in the AIP under Restricted Area R104.

[GrumpyOldFart]

You could always spend a few hours snooping around this site (http://www.secret-bases.co.uk/secret.htm).

[treadigraph]

Ah, fair enough, Googling the village name also reveals a fair bit!

[HighTow]

Why be so secretive? The identity is in the public domain on aeronautical charts and in the AIP under Restricted Area R104. Common knowledge doesn't mean that OS won't follow government guidelines on not revealing the true nature of a facility. That said, I'm sure OS just has a simple classification system for certain areas so "works" would cover any large industrial type complex.

That said, back in the day a lot of these generalisations just came down to photographic interpretation of aerial photos. If it looked like an industrial site, it was marked as works, even if it was something else.

[XV490]

The one thats imaginitivly signed as a Works Unit

Do you mean this one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Welford)?

[chevvron]

I was referring to the site 'nearby to AWRE' not to Welford.

[Bored987]

Fair point HighTow. Marking a "Works" or "Depot" more specifically would be difficult even if you weren't going to print "Secret Nuclear Research Facility".

I was in northern Pakistan many years ago, in the bit that's likely to get you bombed by a Predator drone now. Apparently most of the maps were based on aerial photos taken after the war when it was still British India, once the maps were made they had to send someone around the remote bits to ask the names of all the villages and prominent landmarks.

You can picture bored soldiers waiting desperately for demob trudging the lonely passes armed only with a rough copy of the map, a basic grasp of the language and a War Department pencil (signed for in triplicate).

Having returned from their travels the maps were printed and sent for proof reading. It was only then noticed that quite a few of the villages were called "Don't ask me I'm new here" or "P*** off I'm busy" etc.

Sadly as far as I know no comedy names still appear on the maps, although I suspect there are other examples even in the font of all modern cartographic knowledge that is Google Earth.

[Four Wings]

Story from Italy: in mid 70s aerial photas became available from NASA. In Italy the agents for NASA are the Italian Air Force. Italian friend of mine ordered aerial photo of Rome (where he lived). Eventually photo arrived.
However, in Italy it's against the law (old Mussolini law like so many current Italian laws) to depict military installations on photos or maps.
Caught in Catch 22, Italian Air Force had Snopaked 22 spots on the photo, pinpointing exactly the location of all military installations in Rome.
There's something endearing about Italian bureaucracy....

[Bored987]

Of course the main reason there are so many laws from Mussolini's time is that with the exception of Burlosconi all Italian parliaments last about a week before breaking up in acrimony. And Berlosconi hasn't got round to changing anything because he's been busy doing other things.

(Currently the other thing is 17 and called Ruby if the La Republica are to be believed)