Scampton runway

cheers for all that, though I did read the last bit on the RAF history, I didn’t take it to mean a new surface being laid, ‘upgrade’ is a bit ambiguous.

1944, all Sqn’s moved away to various stations for first upgrade of Scampton runways
December 1944, 2 Bomber Sqn’s returned to Scampton
http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafscampton/aboutus/history.cfm

Yes, there was a degree of this though airfields generally didn’t tend to expand their basic footprint greatly during the war years – owing to the ever increasing numbers of new bases being built there was little need – basing more aircraft doesn’t mean just more parking space, one also needs more fuel and armanents storage, personnel billets, mess halls etc etc. You do get the odd new loop of ASPs running off the existing airfield peri track but it’s usually relatively small scale. The average RAF bomber airfield was built to operate two based squadrons and even with the growth in the physical size of aircraft and bigger crews, the average RAF airfield could still cope. The vast expansion of airfield size tended to come post war with the introduction of jets and the need for long runways.

Perimeter security varied – army, RAF erks on picket duty and after 1942 the RAF Regiment, formed as a specialist airfield protection corps. I don’t think Home Guard had much to do with providing airfield security. As you say, perimeters tended to have fairly basic fencing – little more than a roll of barbed wire in places.

Seen photos and paintings showing bombers dispersed around the perimeter of bases sometimes within or under trees. I guess that as more aircraft became based additional farm land was requistioned to serve as parking areas with PSP or similar being laid to access the airfield. Security must have been a nightmare, who would have been responsible for this RAF, Army, Home Guard, as I doubt that fencing would have been errected as the land would still have been farmed.

Scampton had hard standings around the perimeter of the flying field from the early war years, in addition to the apron in front of the hangars, but grass runways until late in 1943. Bomber bases didn’t have blast pens in the way that fighter stations did; instead aircraft were dispersed around the perimeter for some form of limited protection from air attack. Obviously by the time the main bomber campaign was up and running, the threat of enemy interdictor action over the UK had receded somewhat (though it had not gone away entirely) so the need to ‘harden’ the bomber bases was not seen as a priority.

rafmod says there were perimetre asphalt hardstandings prior to the construction of the concrete runways and that many of these were lost during the reconstruction.

Think it was grass with a hard peri track and hardstandings. I’m only going off the top of my head, what I can remember from reading a book about Scampton a couple of months back

So before that it would have been the usual case of trundle off down the grass, would it have all been grass or would there have been some firm surfaces around the hangars, also with the bombers in the early part of the war, would they have been dispersed around the airfield or in blast pens as the front line fighter bases or were they considered less of a threat?

Once again thank you for the amazingly swift response and bottomless well of knowledge on here

Finished summer 44

scampton runways

after august 1943