Originally Posted by
parabellum
Manston, UK, used to be one of the widest runways, to cope with crippled aircraft landing, a very large area covered in foam made for a safer 'arrival' as it was highly likely the crippled aircraft would not be able to maintain a straight line after touch down.
Not quite. I believe the idea was the three 'emergency' runways ie Manston, Woodbridge and Carnaby were constructed with runways 5 times normal width, 750ft instead of 150ft, so that 3 'strips' of 250ft wide were formed. Aircraft would land on one of these (not sure if it was the left or right one) until it got blocked, then the adjacent one would be brought into use.
There was an excellent article about this in 'Air Pictorial' back in the '60s or '70s.
As far as I'm aware, the foam carpet didn't come into use until the creation of Master Diversion Aerodromes in the late '50s/early '60s.
Another 'wide' runway was Shobdon in Herefordshire, which I believe had a double width runway to permit training on glider tugs operating takeoffs and landings simultaneously as the grass edges were too soft and not load bearing.
Back in the USA, Newark has extensive areas paved over although there is grass between the runways and I believe other airfields in the USA have this too.