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I haven’t seem the film, but I will try to find it. It’s good that some historical remnant - the control tower -remains. In NE Australia, there were a huge num

I haven’t seem the film, but I will try to find it. It’s good that some historical remnant - the control tower -remains. In NE Australia, there were a huge number of airfields that many hundreds of B-25s and other aircraft flew out from on missions to distant Pacific islands and back again. There is almost nothing remaining of that history as landing strips became roads or crops were grown over them.

m0nty 8y ago
It's rare that these airfields have survived in the UK. Beaulieu Heath was an important airfield in WW2, but now it's almost invisible from the ground. Google Maps shows its layout quite clearly still: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8056961,-1.5015827,1429m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8056961,-1.5015827,1429m/dat... Worse perhaps is we're graudally losing that sense of history, of courage and sacrifice. I wouldn't want to be jingoistic about it, but I think people are unaware of what the wartime generations went through.
- jabl 8y ago
  > Worse perhaps is we're graudally losing that sense of history, of courage and sacrifice. I wouldn't want to be jingoistic about it, but I think people are unaware of what the wartime generations went through. While it pains me as a ww2 buff to say this, I do think that as a society we have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with WW2. And, it's not like it ever made sense to turn East Anglia into some kind of WW2 air war museum. After the war, people wanted their farmlands back, and wanted to continue their lives, and they had every right to do that.
KineticLensman 8y ago
One clue to the existence of old airbases (at least in the UK) is in the names of the new streets that have been built over or near them. For example this map of Christchurch [0] is centred on 'The Runway', and street names reference the following WW2-era aircraft: Brabazon, Halifax, De Havilland, Viscount and Blenheim. Similarly, this map [1] of St Ives has streets that include Comet, Wellington, Blenheim, Canberra, Lancaster and others [0] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.7378007,-1.7376243,16.5z?hl=en-GB https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.7378007,-1.7376243,16.5z?h... [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Comet+Way,+Saint+Ives+PE27+3UX/@52.3406011,-0.0805388,17z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Comet+Way,+Saint+Ives+PE...

m0nty 8y ago

It's rare that these airfields have survived in the UK. Beaulieu Heath was an important airfield in WW2, but now it's almost invisible from the ground. Google Maps shows its layout quite clearly still: https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8056961,-1.5015827,1429m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8056961,-1.5015827,1429m/dat... Worse perhaps is we're graudally losing that sense of history, of courage and sacrifice. I wouldn't want to be jingoistic about it, but I think people are unaware of what the wartime generations went through.

jabl 8y ago
> Worse perhaps is we're graudally losing that sense of history, of courage and sacrifice. I wouldn't want to be jingoistic about it, but I think people are unaware of what the wartime generations went through. While it pains me as a ww2 buff to say this, I do think that as a society we have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with WW2. And, it's not like it ever made sense to turn East Anglia into some kind of WW2 air war museum. After the war, people wanted their farmlands back, and wanted to continue their lives, and they had every right to do that.

KineticLensman 8y ago

One clue to the existence of old airbases (at least in the UK) is in the names of the new streets that have been built over or near them. For example this map of Christchurch [0] is centred on 'The Runway', and street names reference the following WW2-era aircraft: Brabazon, Halifax, De Havilland, Viscount and Blenheim. Similarly, this map [1] of St Ives has streets that include Comet, Wellington, Blenheim, Canberra, Lancaster and others [0] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.7378007,-1.7376243,16.5z?hl=en-GB https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.7378007,-1.7376243,16.5z?h... [1] https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Comet+Way,+Saint+Ives+PE27+3UX/@52.3406011,-0.0805388,17z https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Comet+Way,+Saint+Ives+PE...