Oldest airbase

Pensacola Naval Air Station got into aviation in 1913 and still going strong. Great Museum(gotta get up there some day!) Only 400 miles away!!) My cousin graduated from there, now he is navigating B-52s. Go figure!

Ringmer co-ords

Sorry for the delay, but if anyones still interested the co-ordinates of this rumoured base are N50’54’13.33 E000’06’31.99.

Sadly Google does not bring up a very clear picture of the area in question but Live local does.

The rubble and fitting were when I last looked located directly at the above co-ords which is in a dipped area we cleared at the time to allow launching at a more acute angle on the field, it was clear a building had once stood there and that from the look of the age and type of fittings was from some years back, I wondered at the time if it had anything to do with the Airship base that was once located at Polegate but again could not find anything more about the location or anything linking the two. I must stress that this is just a local tale picked up while we were asking about the rubble at the time and came from the farmer who owned the fields that now make up the ESGC club site.

Interesting claim Cypherus – can you tell us the name and grid ref of this location and then maybe it can be checked with known records of WW1 aerodromes and landing grounds etc?

CL5

The oldest airbase that I am aware of might be this one, Located about two miles east of Lewis in East Sussex and now the home of the East Sussex Gliding club, On the South Eastern border of the land the club owns was reputed to be a Royal flying corps training base of sorts though I have never been able to confirm this the rumour still persists, the area specified has some artifacts in the way of building rubble and water fittings though no photographs have turned up of the layout of the place.

Upavon is pretty old too as is Boscombe Down and Stonehenge (yes airfield not stones!!!)

The Wrights weren’t perfect, and as you rightly say their configuration was something of an aeronautical dead end. But in the second half of 1908 their machine and their flying ability was so far ahead of those on this side of the Atlantic as to be almost embarrassing.
The reason why the Wrights went from pioneers to virtual has-beens in barely a decade could be the subject of a book in itself. Obviously Wilbur’s death in 1912 was a factor. So too was the long argument between both Wrights, (later Orville solo), and Glenn Curtis over his claims that Samuel Pierpoint Langley’s 1903 machine was capable of flight.
Ultimately the point is that they showed the way for all that followed, and were at their very peak in 1908.

William

I would agree on their undoubted flying ability, due to their approach to aircraft stability and controllability requiring it. I would also agree as to their being at a peak in 1908. I wonder though as to their actual practical contribution to aviation. Can it be reasonably argued, for example, that Bleriot’s flight across the channel in 1909 would have been delayed even one day without the Wrights? A comparison between that machine and a modern light aircraft perhaps underlines the longer term irrelevency of the Wrights to mainstream aeronautical development.
Their bitter arguments with the Smithsonian and Curtis as well as their wider patent fights regarding lateral control are certainly part of a bigger story and again ,I agree, these activities seemed to consume a great part of their energies. The later contractual binding of the Smithsonian to accept and also then to foster the Wrights’ claims as part of a larger American propaganda campaign are areas for dispute and bitterness even now in some arenas. For example, I cannot think of any other nation that specified in its Air Attaches TOR’s to further the American claims for the Wrights first flight.
(There was a book, “History by Contract” ,who’s author’s name I have temporarily misplaced, that dealt with this murky saga in some considerable depth.)

But then why the need to do the same in 1908- almost four years later?

The Wrights weren’t perfect, and as you rightly say their configuration was something of an aeronautical dead end. But in the second half of 1908 their machine and their flying ability was so far ahead of those on this side of the Atlantic as to be almost embarrassing.
The reason why the Wrights went from pioneers to virtual has-beens in barely a decade could be the subject of a book in itself. Obviously Wilbur’s death in 1912 was a factor. So too was the long argument between both Wrights, (later Orville solo), and Glenn Curtis over his claims that Samuel Pierpoint Langley’s 1903 machine was capable of flight.
Ultimately the point is that they showed the way for all that followed, and were at their very peak in 1908.

William

But then why the need to do the same in 1908- almost four years later? The European competition was by then long flying off unassisted with wheeled undercarriages , which is the most demanding phase regarding power over weight in a normal flight profile. These facts would not have been appreciated by the popular press at the time. In addition, the Wrights flew at very low level indeed and seemed reluctant to demonstrate altitude performance.
In accepting their undoubted contribution, one has to put it in the perspective of the big picture which clearly shows a dead-end approach in many ways when compared to developments in Europe, perhaps underlined by the total absence of any really significant American contribution to aviation until well after the First World War. What happened then is common cause (despite their not actually attaining an independent Air Force until 1947).

“Before their experiments had progressed far in 1904 the Wrights saw that a better method of launching the machine was needed. They decided that a derrick with a falling weight would be the simplest and cheapest device”
Fred C. Kelly The Wright Brothers
(The authorised biography)

I wouldn’t disagree at all with this. By the autumn of 1904 the Wrights didn’t have to prove anything to themselves, so they could adopt the catapult as a simple and sure-fire way of getting to take-off speed consistently and quickly in an aircraft that didn’t have any wheels.

William

The first point is that the Wrights didn’t have to use a catapult. Theychose to for the sake of conveinece, which is not quite the same thing, I would suggest.
William

“Before their experiments had progressed far in 1904 the Wrights saw that a better method of launching the machine was needed. They decided that a derrick with a falling weight would be the simplest and cheapest device”
Fred C. Kelly The Wright Brothers
(The authorised biography)

I think this point is debatable. Many in the European community at the time pored scorn on the fact that the Wrights were still having to use a gravity catapult to get airborne!

The first point is that the Wrights didn’t have to use a catapult. Theychose to for the sake of conveinece, which is not quite the same thing, I would suggest.
All the 1903 flights were without a catapult. Between May 26 and December 9 1904 they made around 100 flights, with the catapult first used on September 7. By this time they were flying from near their home in Ohio, which did not have the reliable and constant winds of the coastal site used for the first flights.
European experimenters were at first sceptical of the Wright claims, based on the limited information that had crosssed the Atlantic. Wilbur’s first flights in Europe, though, were dramatic proof that at that time the Wrights, by then, were in a class of their own.
To put it in context, Henri Farman had flown the first circuit in Europe in January 1908. finally equalling the Wrights’ achievement of September 20, 1904.
By mid-1908 a European pilot, Louis Delagrange, had managed to keep his plane aloft for 15 minutes. Orville had managed that in September 1905, while Wilbur made a two-hour flight (1hr 54 mins to be accurate) in front of witnesses in France in December 1908.
All the key European experimenters were gracious in admitting that the Wrights had done everything they said, and had frankly humiliated the Europeans.
The Wrights’ all too visible superiority spurred the Euopeans to greater things, though, and as the Wrights faded into the background established a long period of European leadership in matters aeronautical.
At this point I rather think I’ve drifted off-thread!

William

Don Muang (Bangkok) claims to be the world’s oldest continuously operated airoprt – opened 1914.

Wrights’ European triumph in 1908, BTW?

William

I think this point is debatable. Many in the European community at the time pored scorn on the fact that the Wrights were still having to use a gravity catapult to get airborne!

NAS North Island started in 1910 and is still going strong today, I think it was the first military field on the west coast.

That’s be the west coast of… America, I guess… 😉

Commissioned as a Naval Air Station in 1917, although Glenn Curtiss operated there until W.W.I, and the first naval aviators trained on the site in 1911.

NAS North Island started in 1910 and is still going strong today, I think it was the first military field on the west coast.

If I may be permitted to intrude…
Maxwell AFB in Alabama (not a very nice place…I spent weeks there for a school) was home to a Wright Brothers founded flying school circa 1911…and it’s still an active military field. Certainly some kind of record.

Hi John,
That was an interesting one. The early days at Maxwell seem a little unclear in detail, from what I was able to gather off the web;

Wikipedia:

Toward the end of February 1910, the Wright Brothers decided to open one of the world’s earliest flying schools at the site that would subsequently become Maxwell AFB. The Wrights taught the principles of flying, including take-offs, balancing, turns, and landings. The first recorded heavier-than-air night flights in aviation history occurred at the Alabama field on 25 May 1910. The school closed on May 27.
The field served as a repair depot during World War I. In fact, the depot built the first plane made in Montgomery and exhibited it at the field on 20 September 1918.

It looks to me that it had a civilian start, and a break in usage after W.W.I, but I’m far from clear. This is as vague:

In exchange for locating a flying school in the Montgomery area, these businessmen offered Wright an old cotton plantation northwest of Montgomery. The offer also included construction of a hangar and transportation to and from Montgomery.

Toward the end of February 1910, Wilbur Wright decided to open one of the world’s earliest flying schools at the site that would subsequently become Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB) A few years later, the first recorded heavier-than-air night flights in aviation history occurred at the Alabama field on 25 May

More details?

Scouse; my thought would be that an airport needs to be licensed in some form, and to have facilities for receiving and dispatching passenger flights; customs, and some form of schedule might be the primary ones. Wikipedia’s page on ‘airport’ is interesting as regard history; it gives Croydon as the first international airport to open (of course it is now long closed).

As it happens a similar question came up in the local pub quiz last wek, in the shape of “What is the oldest airport in continuous operation in the EU?”
My answer would really be “Please define what you mean by an airport?”, but in the end assumed that what he meant was a civilian airfield with scheduled flights and (possibly) customs facilities.
We took a wild stab at Berlin Templehof, but the answer required was Schiphol. I’m going to ask for my money back next week…
Is there still an airfield at Hunaudieres, near Le Mans and the scene of the Wrights’ European triumph in 1908, BTW?

William

Although the post title doesn’t indicate it…it seems you want to know about UK airbases.

If I may be permitted to intrude…
Maxwell AFB in Alabama (not a very nice place…I spent weeks there for a school) was home to a Wright Brothers founded flying school circa 1911…and it’s still an active military field. Certainly some kind of record.

I’m amazed that no-one’s mentioned Brooklands (where are you Melvyn? 😀 ), which was active with various pioneers including AV Roe from as early as September 1907.

Certainly in terms of the word ‘air base’, Farnborough surely must have been the first, with the creation of the Royal Engineers Balloon School in 1907 and the Royal Aircraft Factory.

By the time Old Sarum, Shoreham and the like had become operational, Farborough was sufficiently well established that the local photographers were selling postcards of it to tourists!

Un;ess flying has been going on at a site since before 1908, then Farnborough has to be the oldest continuously operating airfield in the UK.