What happened to the USAF underground nuclear-proof hospital at Little Rissy?

Yep, several times. Problem with Thurleigh is, again, access. It might be a short spur from one of the main N-S railway lines but as anyone who has lived around Bedford will tell you, traffic is a nightmare. Last real attempt, IIRC, was to turn it into a freight airport with good rail links, but for road links you are pretty much stuck with single carriage way and invariably through, rather than round, small villages.

Can't help thinking that Alconbury and Upper Heyford would make much better new "London" airports, particularly UH with its proximity to the M40 and another N-S mainline.

Alconbury already sold-off for development, houses and light-industry', & Wyton likely to go that way too!
AD'

I called into Swinditz over the bank holidays and bar the odd hangar and an empty airfield. I was pleasantly suprised to see ( after a twinge of sadness ) a complete new village with schools etc built on what was the domestic site, driving around the site old officers quarters are still there, though separate from the main village. Only sadness was I didn't see any streets named to reflect the airfields past, but that does not mean some haven't been.

Aah Swinditz. I was first introduced to whisky there, during an ATC camp in '59, along with my first trip in a jet aeroplane; a Vampire, quickly followed by a puke on the dispersal. So ill was I that I couldn't bare the whiff of it until my fifties. Now, happily, it's a different story!

Roland and Beags have it - the key issue obviating London expansion at Rissi and many other former stations is access.

Conversely, not only does Upper Heyford have remarkably good road and rail infrastructure already in place, but the travel time on existing rail from central London is less than that to the nether LHR terminals on the Tube! What's more, the terrain would allow for the construction of at least one more 260 with the requisite separation, and all this in an area of minimal population density.

To my simple mind, redevelopment of the wickedly-wasted Upper Heyford facilities (perhaps with further enhancement of the Chiltern line, instead of the wanton folly of HS2) is just a no-brainer .... but, as we all know, Whitehall is even lower that in the brainpower stakes.

Wethersfield and Dutch F-16C last year
 

I read in Air Forces Monthly earlier in the year, that last Sept, the Dutch sent over four ship of F-16C and a C-130H to the former RAF now MOD Police Training Wethersfield so it became an active airfield for a day or so.

Can be done, I've ranted over Alconbury on here that remove the containers which contain a lot of crap, and turn it into a good airfield or maybe EUCOM or USAFE could utilise it for support not full time day in day out aircraft ops or even once a year or biannually international airshow. Could conceivably land a U-28 in the area not covered by the containers as seen on Google earth :) be handy for the residents the other side of the A14 if you get my drift.

With the likes of Lyneham if I am correct and Kinloss still keeping some limited airfield ops in case of emergencies / overspill for Brize and Lossie?

Sculthorpe is kept alive on an ad hoc basis for the Mildenhall SOG folks and RAF even though its been closed for near 2 decades. Ideally could be used as an emergency outlying for Norwich International?

Surely we're ignoring the 'elephant in the room' that is Bruntingthorpe...

- 'kin huge runway
- adjacent to M1
- adjacent to mainline to Euston
- in a low density populated area
- oh, and did I mention 'kin huge runway?

LJ :ok:

Plus, there's always London/Milton Keynes International...

...Cranfield.

Near to the M1 and trainline and if I recall correctly is about 6,000ft long so would only need another 1-2,000ft of concrete to be really useful.

LJ

Can't imagine many airlines wanting to operate from a strip only 7-8000 feet long! A bit limiting for most larger aircraft types flying trans continental sectors.

Back in 1987 I was given a site plan of Cranfield and asked by the owner of a resident aircraft to modify it for an April fools joke.:E The main runway was doubled in length and Cranfield village disappeared under a terminal building and motorway spur from the M1. The resulting drawing was printed, folded an then marked up with alterations and 'distressed' with a few coffee cup stains before being placed in a folder and 'lost' in the airfield restaurant.

If it was ever found, it was obviously never looked at because the trouble it could have caused never happened.:*

Chopper2004,

It was actually North Weald and the Norwegian Air Force.

"London Cranfield"
 

When I was a student at Cranfield, we could always tell when we were near Cranfield on the M1, there was fog or other low lying clouds there. There was a story that Cranfield had been used once as a divert field when as I recall Heathrow was closed, the plane landed and stopped ok, to get airborne again the seats etc had to be removed due to the short runway.
Cranfield is also quite built up as a university...

Here's another thought..
 

What about Manston?
Very large runway, close to a major rail route and a motorway.....

Re Alconbury. The cynic in me suggests that as Sir John Major was the local Huntingon MP (and may still be?), any civil use of that site was a non-starter.

Sculthorpe is occasionally used by the Mildenhall C-130's, and is often NOTAMed for Hawk FAC exercises as well. Rumour has it that it could be used for the displaced 611 VGS gliding school that's now homeless, following Watton being sold off for houses.

Time will tell......

Thought there was a VGS at Rissy.; is it still operating?

Manston/Kent Intl has tried to run airline services, and I flew to Nice from there once, perhaps twice on EUjet. KLM fly to Schipol twice a day at the moment.

The problem is that North Kent isn't actually very close for that many people. Upper Heyford makes more sense, but neither will ever happen as London's third airport.

If God was going to give the World an Enema, he'd stick the tube in Cranfield, so an ideal place to build over, trouble is the runway was chopped a bit when they built the Nissan development centre on the end of it..

As for Bruntingthorpe might conflict a bit with East Mids 15 miles north.... And it is actively used.

No school, its planned but not built yet The site is the old MT yard which is a pile of rubble.

There are only three new road names on the site: Harris; Blenheim and Lancaster chosen 15 years ago by the CDC because of their WW2 connection!
Very much so, the RAF still operate the airfield.

The developers are currently removing the hangars though one occupant a Nut Company, has refused to move out!

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...r%20C-type.jpg

F4, thanks for the correction ...and just finding the said back page of AFM, so thanks for putting me right.. Must have been tired and hallucinating :ugh: and wishful thinking as was also looking at FighterControl site, with photos taken back in early 70s of the U-2 temp deployment to Wethersfield.

Cheers