Monument record 0676700000 - Aylesbury and Thame Airport

Airfield enlarged and developed in the early years of World War II to be officially opened as RAF Thame in January 1941. The Bessoneaux hangars and three domestic huts were in situ by 11 January 1941. Outbuildings and barns owned by local landowners were also acquired to make the site operational for the training of glider pilots under the auspices of No 23 Group, Flying Training Command. Joint exercises were carried out with the Air Fighting Development Unit, Duxford, to test the effectiveness of gliders for live missions and to develop tactics for gilders to survive attacks by enemy planes. The aircraft based at the site included Tiger Moths, Hotspurs, Hawker Hectors, Miles Masters, Hawker Hinds and Avro 504Ns. The gliders included Kirby Kites. A Gliders Instructors School was established in late 1942, but moved to Shobden in 1943. Thame proved too small for larger gliders and so training also moved in 1943 to Croughton, Northamptonshire. The Royal Naval Air Experimental Department took over the site in 1943 testing Martinets, Swordfish and Vengeance aircraft for target towing. Between May 1945 and November 1945 the site was used by the 3rd Reception RAF. Between November 1945 and 30 April 1946 it was used by the RAF Radio Engineers (B1).
Home of the pioneering Gilder Training Sqaudron (B2).
The site was visited by the King and Queen, and Churchill during the war. After the site closed as a military base, the buildings were occupied by squatters and the perimeter track was used for car and motor cycling racing (B3).
Negative evaluation and watching brief reports for residential and business redevelopment of part of airfield (B6-7).

A military airfield of World War II date is visible on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data as extant buildings, structures and earthworks and was/were mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located at Haddenham and centred at SP 73285 09129. The airfield is visible mainly by its perimeter road because the runway was a grass strip. The airfield was first set up in 1939 and extended to the east after 1942 because the runway was not long enough for safe landings on days when there was little or no wind. The extension of the airfield closed a road which formed the eastern boundary of the site and a bridge in the perimeter road could be seen crossing the course of this road on 1940s and 50s aerial photographs. The airfield extension may also have been the reason the windmill in Windmill Road was demolished, unless it was demolished previously. It is marked on the Ordnance Surveyors’ Drawing (1813-4) for Aylesbury and marked on the Ordnance Survey Epoch 1 map.
After Christmas 1940 a Glider Training Squadron was moved to the airfield which became RAF Thame. The existence of ridge and furrow earthworks was mentioned in an account of the state of the site at the time. Also mentioned, as a deterrent to hostile aircraft landing, was haphazard siting of old motorcars across the airfield, but no aerial photos showing this were available to the project. The existence of only one hangar building and a lack of other buildings is also recorded. By 1946 many more buildings, including Blister Hangars, Hangars, including Bessoneau Hangars, a Control Tower, Blast Shelters and Stanton Air Raid Shelters with a paved taxiway between the perimeter road and other buildings can be seen. No plan of RAF Thame was available to the project to help identify these sites and buildings.
A factory making propeller blades was set up in 1939 by the Hordern Richmond Company in the south eastern corner of the airfield. The work was transferred to a new factory in Gloucester in 1956. All but one of the buildings, close to Windmill Road, has been demolished and the southern section of the whole airfield redeveloped for housing and industrial use from 2003 onwards.
A scrap yard was in the eastern corner of the airfield was home to a Vickers-Supermarine Walrus from 1949 until 1963 when it was recovered. This plane can be seen on images from 1949 and 1961.
Three further sites to support the airfield were also mapped; a communal feeding and social site (on the site of the current library), a vehicle depot with possible accommodation or office buildings (on the south side of the Thame Road), and a further possible accommodation site (redeveloped as Willis Road). Servicemen and women were also accommodated in pre-existing buildings, for example Yolsum House (since demolished).
Mapping was undertaken from the clearest image of the whole site which was taken in 1950. Earlier photos were used to establish which buildings were only present before this date and the features recorded from these photographs.
A further blast shelter was mapped, located on the north side of Thame Road, centred at SP 73267 08595. The site is had been redeveloped for houses on by 2010 but the structure could still be seen on aerial photographs up to that date, albeit overgrown. Unlike the other three recorded at the airfield this does not have a separate HER record. (11-31)