Originally Posted by
Shackman
Since this has come to the top again, there's also Aston Down, all I remember was a short runway and a load of Ansons there. ALthough it was still owned by MOD/RAF I think day to day running was by a gliding club that had (or was) moving in.
Aston Down was used by the CFS as a satellite until the mid seventies. Most of the kit required to support this operation was gone by the early eighties and the airfield runways sold to gliding club. The sale had some interesting caveats related to the runways which made them ideal for the gliding operation.
The main technical area was sold in the early naughties.
The last military aircraft to land there in RAF times (Late 70’s) was a Hunter that declared an emergency landing, suffered brake failure and was arrested by the South end chain link fence, luckily without anyone getting hurt.........Apart from the Lynx that had a nav system failure and dropped in to ask for directions, and there were the A10 and KC135, both of which got to about 100ft over the threshold before they realised it wasn’t Fairford.