Yes we all knew about the 'return to agriculture' clause when working for BAe, but it's amazing what £ signs can do...
Top marks to Cranleigh & Waverley Councils for resisting to date - with luck the utter daftness & over-ambition ( dare I say greed ? ) of the proposed plans will be clear to anyone with a brain.
So far, from the proposals I've seen, the potential developers fancy building well over 2,000 houses in what is still beautiful countryside ( and a very useful airfield ) with only tiny country roads to serve it, except for cutting a direct link to the A281 Guildford road, which is already notoriously dangerous & busy.
The crowning glory must be the scheme to dig up the runway- as far as I can make out, yes the hard bit, not to one side of it - how mad is that ?!
Then flood it with a link to the ( incompletely restored ) Wey & Arun canal so as to provide 'waterside properties' !!!
Someone has commented that the local water table / reserves couldn't cope with this - maybe just a cynical ploy to prevent aviation.
As mentioned previously, they have said they plan a museum featuring ' every aircraft type developed at Dunsfold ' - well I'll leave you fellow aircraft enthusiasts to judge the possibility of doing that, and the reasoning behind making such a claim.
So, it's a ghastly idea for the area as it is now, and aims to obliterate a lot of history, beginning with the aircrews who lost their lives there and from there, from 1942 on.
During the war any wreckage tended to be dumped into the canal, as it runs along one side of the airfield.
In my time, 1978-93, the canal was dredged and cleared at that stretch - along with discarded ordnance, large chunks of B-25 were recovered, we knew the story; the Dutch were operating these Mitchells, and one had a bomb hung up.
The crew were offered the chance to bail out, but stayed with it; on touch-down it blew up killing them all.
So with that and other incidents I would think it qualifies as a war grave too.
Then there is the contribution made during POW return, the Berlin Airlift, Skyways, F-86 & Sea Fury refurbishment, the Hawker aircraft developed there which did a lot for UK Ltd's exports and prestige ( Hunter, Harrier, anyone ?! ) - and still do today despite Warton / Brough 'stealing' the production lines of the Hawks, all models of which were first test flown at Dunsfold...yet it still remains an attractive place, sympathetically merging into the countryside.
The late Neville Duke's house just inside the airfield, which he mentions in his book 'Test Pilot' is still there, though could do with some TLC.
In a perfect world, as pilots have mentioned to me before when over-flying, it would make a fantastic warbird restoration base !
Last edited by Double Zero; 4th Jun 2008 at 23:31.