As part of the Aviation Heritage Trail series, the airfields and interest in this book are concentrated in a particular area—in this case Kent, Surrey, East Sussex, Essex and Greater London. The South east of England emerged from six years of war with a rich diversity of RAF bomber and fighter airfields used by the 2nd Tactical Air Force, both before and after the D-Day landings. Much of this proud legacy is now threatening to disappear. However, the tourist can combine visits to an abundance of disused and active airfields, country houses and museums with countless attractions, imaginative locations and broadland and coastal hideaways that have no equal.The airfields and other places of interest include Northolt, Manston, Sculthorp, Dunsfold, Swanton Morley, Hunsdon, Gravesend, Detling, Biggin Hill, Kenley, Redhill, Gatwick, Heston, Hornchurch, Chailey, Coolham, Horne, West Malling and Newchurch.This book looks at the history and personalities associated with each base, what remains today and explores the favourite local wartime haunts where aircrew and ground crew would have sought well-deserved entertainment and relaxation. Other museums and places that are relevant will also be described and general directions on how to get them included.

In his 1945 report to the Combined Chiefs-of-Staff on the success of Operation ‘Overlord’, the Supreme Commander General Eisenhower wrote that "on the morning of June 9 I?was able to announce that for the first time since 1940, Allied air forces were operating from France, and that within three weeks of D-Day, 31 Allied squadrons were operating from the ­beach-head bases." In their forecasts for the first three months following D-Day, the planners plotted the number of the advanced landing grounds that would be required in Normandy to support the Allied air forces up to September 1944. Using maps and aerial photographs, individual sites were surveyed and plans drawn up so that when each location was captured, either US Aviation Engineers, the Royal Engineers or RAF?Airfield Construction Wings, could move in without delay to begin work to build them. This book tells the story of every airfield that became operational by D+90, explaining the methods used to construct them and the units that flew from them. The vast majority of the temporary airstrips have now been returned to the farmland from which they came, but by using engineers’ plans from the period and modern aerial photographs, we have portrayed the sites in true After the Battle fashion: as they were then and as they are today.

"As part of the Aviation Heritage Trail series, the airfields and interest in this book are concentrated in a particular area in this case West Sussex, Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Cornwall. The South and South-west of England emerged from six years of war with a rich diversity of RAF bomber and fighter airfields used by the 2nd Tactical Air Force, both before and after the D-Day landings. Much of this proud legacy is now threatening to disappear. However, the tourist can combine visits to an abundance of disused and active airfields, country houses and museums with countless attractions, imaginative locations, broad land, and coastal hideaways that have no equal.The airfields and other places of interest include Hartford Bridge, Lasham, Westhamptonett, Merston, Odiham, Holmsley South, Funtington, Hurn, Ford, Tangmere, Ibsley, Perranporth, Thruxton, Thorney Island, Appledram, Selesy, Needs Oar Point, Zeals, Lee-on-Solent and Bognor Regis. This book looks at the history and personalities associated with each base, what remains today and explores the favorite local wartime haunts where aircrew and ground crew would have sought well-deserved entertainment and relaxation. Other museums and places that are relevant will also be described and general directions on how to get them included."

On June 6, 1944, the Allies launched Operation Overlord, the largest, most hazardous amphibious assault in history. The objective: establishment of a lodgment area in Normandy from which the Allies could strike at the heart of Germany and destroy the German armed forces. Air supremacy over northwest Europe was an absolute prerequisite for the success of the invasion, and to achieve it the U.S. Army Air Forces launched two campaigns aimed at destroying the Germans’ transportation advantages in the area. In the months and days leading up to the assault, the Army Air Forces ceaselessly bombed rail centers, rendering most of the railways in northern France and Belgium unusable. Once the actual invasion was underway, the Allies shifted to an interdiction campaign, using precise air attacks on critical transportation installations near the battlefield to neutralize Germany’s efforts to resupply and reinforce their troops. This work makes use of many wartime records that had remained classified until recently.

The largely sea-borne invasion of Northern France in June 1944, Operation Overlord, is acknowledged as one of the key actions which hastened the end of the Second World War. The RAF played a vital part in the landings. It then supported the subsequent advance of Montgomery’s 21st Army, and the Allies as a whole, through France, Belgium, Holland and into Germany. Following the breakout from the Normandy bridgehead in early August 1944, the RAF’s Second Tactical Air Force moved forward in support of the troops, occupying a number of temporary airfields as it went. The ground support for this operation was complex, a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that much of it had to be highly mobile. The advance, however, was rapid and soon ran into problems as the supply lines grew longer by the day. The planners had envisaged that capturing the Belgian port of Antwerp would eventually enable them to bring in vitally needed supplies much further north on the Continent. Although the city and its port were liberated in September 1944, the port’s route to the sea along the River Scheldt was still controlled by German forces. It took nearly three months until this was resolved, and the port opened for business. Until then, in the RAF’s equivalent of the US Army’s famed ‘Red Ball Express’, it was some 300 miles by road from Normandy with the Second Tactical Air Force largely reliant on the Army for transporting its needs. For an air force needing large volumes of fuel and ammunition, demand soon began to outpace supply. A number of emergency measures were put in place to keep the aircraft operational, which saw the RAF resorting to the use of its heavy bombers to fly in supplies. Even when Antwerp was up and running, supplying the Second Tactical Air Force remained a hand-to-mouth affair right through until the enemy’s surrender in May 1945. In Forward Air Bases in Europe from D-Day to the Baltic the author explores the challenges of supporting a mobile air force in those uncertain days as Hitler’s forces were retreating to their homeland. As the Allies found, things can go badly wrong when thinking loses touch with the art of the possible – logistics. In the end, miraculously, it worked, but it was a close-run thing.