"I wonder if younger people sense a melancholy atmosphere around so many derelict airfields, or is it just we oldies?"
Definitely. They have 'ghosts' if not actual ghosts. Places that ooze history and bravery and tragedy.
I was invited to a guest night at RAF Station Northolt (by an army Captain, so it felt very pre-April 1918!) the other week, and I could feel history around me in the officers' mess. A little like visiting Tower Green where Queens were beheaded, or going to a dinner in Banqueting House and thinking of Charles I. I cannot sit in a room like that without recalling all those who hadn't made it back to the mess for dinner - or even those who had.