[canonuk]

Hi guys,

I took a trip to the National Archives in Kew today and spent many hours looking through some amazing material. My plan was to collect sketches of Luftwaffe airfields in France so that I could accurately populate my Battle of Britain map. I managed to find good aerial photographs of some key airfields in my area, as well as some others in France and east Germany. I also found a document produced by the RAF intelligence service cataloguing the development of Luftwaffe airfields, giving examples of the standard generic patterns used.

Since I found very little useful material on the internet, I've decided to draw up my sketches neatly and clearly and publish them online for people to use. Here's my first one - Beauvais/Tille airfield, 1943. Some of the structures/buildings are generic/approximate in placement since I was going for the overall feel of those parts. Maybe one day I'll do a super accurate version



Anyway, here's a list of the airfields I have details for, and they'll follow in the next few weeks. (The 'generic' airfields aren't made up - they're from actual photos. They were just used in a report as example airfields)

Lille/Vendeville
Beaumont-sur-Oise
Lille-Nord
Vitry-en-Artois
Abbeville/Drucat (dispersal area only)
St Omer (1940 and 1943)
Nancy/Essey 1944
Generic 'Station' style airfield, Germany, 1939
Generic 'Operational Landing Ground' style airfield, Germany, 1939
Generic 'Air Park' style airfield, Germany, 1939
Hesepe 1940/41
Merville, 1940
Generic Fighter airfield, France, 1941
Generic Fighter airfield, France, 1943
Nightfighter airfield, France, 1943

Comments welcome