Discovering Kent’s wartime airfields that never were
By Paul Tritton
Eighty years ago, Kent’s RAF fighter stations remained on constant standby for Luftwaffe raids, even though in late 1940 Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had conceded defeat in his efforts to destroy them to gain air superiority as a prelude to the invasion of southern England (‘Operation Seelöwe’) that Hitler craved. Göring’s next targets were farther inland, and by the end of 1941, much of London’s East End and vast swaths of many provincial industrial cities and ports had been devastated.
Although Germany was now preoccupied with its invasion of Russia (‘Operation Barbarossa’), its future intentions vis-à-vis Britain were unpredictable, and it could not be assumed that Hitler had shelved Seelöwe for good. Sporadic and heavy raids continued, and in the spring and early summer
Below, left
Fig 1: Derelict control shelter for RAF Manston’s Q50B bombing decoy airfield on Ash Level
Below, right
Fig 2: Fighter Command 11 Group stations in the Second World War. (© Froglet Publications. Drawn by Alison Stammers for Biggin on the Bump by Bob Ogley of 1942, the ‘Baedeker raids’ on historic English cities of no military importance would be launched.
On 1 June, Canterbury became the campaign’s fourth target; 43 people were killed, nearly 100 were injured, and 1,800 buildings in the medieval city centre were destroyed or seriously damaged. ‘Hit and run’ attacks later that summer caused more casualties.
Throughout the war, 11 Group Fighter Command’s squadrons were ready to be scrambled to intercept formations of bombers approaching from bases less than an hour’s flying time from the Kent coast. One effective counter- measure to protect the stations was the construction of decoy airfields to lure the He-111s, Ju-88s and
Do-17s into dropping their bombs harmlessly over open countryside. In
Kent, the stations defended by this ploy were at Biggin Hill, Eastchurch, Gravesend, Hawkinge, Lympne, Manston, West Malling and Detling (the last of these was transferred to Fighter Command from Coastal Command in 1943). Built under the supervision of Colonel John Turner of the Royal Engineers, most of the decoys were for night time use. Named ‘Q’ sites, nearly 150 were built across southern and eastern England. They were so realistic that they had been hit by 859.65 tonnes of bombs during 521 attacks by the end of the war, proving the most successful of all the Air Ministry’s various types of bombing decoys. The number of lives saved is incalculable but substantial.
From bombing altitude (21,300 to 29,500 ft), the sites appeared at night to be genuine fighter bases. Their main feature was
Because their control shelters and access roads were their only
John Guy was accompanied by a water company official who pointed out a concrete bridge built across a ditch to allow a bowser of diesel fuel from Manston, driven by two ‘Waafs’, to deliver fuel once a week for its generators. Timber beams over other ditches supported electrical cables for the dummy lighting system. At least one friendly aircraft is reputed to have been duped into landing there. John was also told there was a farmhouse on the site, from which chinks of light were momentarily allowed to escape to represent a door being opened and hurriedly closed in defiance of the black-out. This feature was more common to Starfish decoys, which imitated towns ablaze in
Top
Fig 3: Drem Q367/41 control shelter on RAF Manston’s Q50B decoy airfield. Structures are (from the left) blast protection walls at the entrance, site of the control room, a passage between generator room and control room, generator room and three expansion chamber bases
Middle
Fig 4: Air Ministry drawing CTD 367/41 of a Drem-type control shelter
Bottom, left
Fig 5: Air inlet for generator
Bottom, right
Fig 6: Interior of generator room showing exhaust aperture night raids, and was intended to suggest people fleeing from their homes to their air-raid shelters.
The main structure of Q50B’s shelter was a combination of pre-cast and site-cast concrete.
When last inspected the blast walls outside its two entrances/exits, a short covered passage between the site of the control room and its generator room was still partially intact. Outside were 15-inch air inlet ducts for the generators and the foundations of the expansion chambers, which muffled the noise of the generators. These features confirm that the shelter is a ‘Drem Q 367/41’ (see Fig 4), a design introduced in September 1941. This type had curved walls and arched roofs, whereas other shelters that have been found in Kent had vertical brick walls and flat reinforced concrete roofs.
As Fighter Command’s most easterly station, Manston was a key target, and on 12 August
1940, a heavy daylight raid left it unserviceable. This attack occurred on the day before Adlertag (‘Eagle Day’), the prelude to Unternehmen Adlerangriff (‘Operation Eagle Attack’), the Luftwaffe’s attempt to destroy the RAF. Air Ministry order AIR 14/3340 gave instructions on the procedure to be followed by decoy airfield crews when an air raid warning was imminent.
‘The operations staff at the parent station will ring up the night ‘dummy’. Here there will be two men
... taking alternate watches. The man on watch wakes his companion and starts up the generator ... one man goes to the control panel and switches on the correct [wind] T, the obstruction light and headlamp. The two men take it in turns to operate the headlamp ... until an aircraft is heard approaching near enough to pick up the landing T.’
‘They will then switch if out and stand on watch. If the aircraft is a friend and signals by a Very light he wants to land (i.e. mistakes the Q lighting for a real aerodrome), the lights are switched off. If it is an enemy who starts to attack, the obstruction lights only are switched off and the flare path is left on because station and satellite [airfields] cannot be extinguished in a sudden attack without great risk to personnel. The two men then take cover and report’.
The headlamp, mounted on a platform, was first rotated through 90 degrees in five seconds, switched off for 40 seconds, then pointed in a different direction and switched on again to repeat the five-second sweep. All this gave the impression of a taxiing aircraft pivoting on one wheel as it turned. In 2010, former Aircraftman Eric Lever was interviewed by author Robin J Brooks about his experiences while on duty at a ‘Q’ site, RAF Biggin Hill’s dummy at Lullingstone (TQ 526 648). The site was alerted at 20.32 hours on 13 February 1944, during a resurgence in night raids on London known as ‘The Little Blitz’. Eric said:
‘It was a lovely clear night and we somehow knew that it was going to be a night for enemy attacks. By 20.51hrs the decoy was well lit and minutes later about 20 to 30 aircraft were heard overhead.
Suddenly they dropped flares which lit up the entire area. Looking out from our control shelter we could see right down the valley.’
‘Minutes later we heard the whistle of bombs and saw what turned out to be high explosive bombs dropped north-east of the site. The noise of the explosions was deafening but they landed some way from the decoy. Minutes later several other explosions were heard as further bombs landed, again some distance away.’
‘To most of us this was our first baptism of fire and it certainly was frightening as trees and bushes within the area burst into flame.
We were then told to extinguish the flare-path lights, leaving just the bad black-out ones on to confuse the enemy. Several aircraft appeared to fly low over the site, but no further bombs fell.’
‘Once the aircraft had gone Biggin Hill instructed us to switch the lights on again. Nothing else happened and we switched all the lights off at 21.55hrs. It was quite a night’.
Above
Fig 7: The control shelter, pictured from one of the ditches spanned by timber beams to support cables for the lighting array
This was the last and final use of the Lullingstone ‘Q’ site. No features survive, and the site is now part of a golf course.
RAF HAWKINGE
This famous station’s decoy, Q147A, was between Woolage Green and Wootton, at TR 238 481, close to the A2 Canterbury – Dover road and about six miles north- west of its parent airfield. Colin Welch visited its site while seeking evidence of a V-1 (‘doodlebug’) flying bomb crater at West Court Farm, Shepherdswell. Jim Weir, the farm owner, showed Colin one of his fields, still called ‘Air Force
Field’, covering 33 acres, where the control shelter and its generator were installed. In those days, one of the farm’s cowsheds was only a short distance away. Jim said:
‘This wasn’t much fun for my grandfather, his sons and employees who had to milk the cows in there twice a day knowing
that they were intended to be a prime target for enemy bombing. However it didn’t fool the Germans and they didn’t suffer attacks.
‘We still occasionally plough up sheathed copper wire for the lights that were placed on the airfield.’
‘After the war the generator was purchased by my family and moved to our cattle yard and used as a power-cut backup supply for the cowshed, farm buildings and house’.
In the 1970s, the generator was sold to the Graves brothers, who ran a grain haulage business in Goodnestone and had a private collection of old farm and other machinery. A subsequent owner used it to power a steam organ that travelled around steam- engine fairs. Its current owner is believed to live in the West Country. Colin heard of another ‘Q’ site in the area while writing a booklet on the history of Wootton.
‘I interviewed Tom Gibson at Tappington Cottage. He told me that the top half of Gatteridge Farm south of Stockhill Wood at TR 204 449 was requisitioned by the military to construct a dummy airfield with landing lights which would be put on at night, but surprisingly the German aircraft took no notice.’
‘The officer in charge was a Captain Pearsey, who was billeted with the Gibson family at Tappington Hall Farm. Power for the site came from a generator at Rakeshole Farm (TR201 442)’.
Like Manston, Hawkinge was heavily bombed the day before Adlertag. Five people were killed. The base received a direct hit in later attacks, and a stray bomb killed six people in a nearby village.
RAF GRAVESEND
Two ‘Q’ sites were built to defend RAF Gravesend – Q96B at Luddesdown (TQ 688 662) and Q96A on Cliffe Marshes (TQ 727 778). Clive Holden discovered structures of both sites and wrote:
‘The Luddesdown decoy bunker is in Longbottom Wood, Upper Bush. I visited it in 2017 and 2019. It consists of two rooms, the generator room and the control room, separated by a short corridor: The entrance is protected by blast walls and there is an escape hatch in the roof of the control room accessed via a short, fixed steel ladder which is still there. The hatch lid is missing.’
‘The interior was fairly clean with just some accumulated rubbish from the surrounding vegetation and very little modern graffiti on the walls. The structure appeared to be very sound with little sign of serious damage. Outside to the right of the generator room there were also the remains of a brick expansion chamber.’
‘The Cliffe Marsh decoy bunker is just off the Mead Wall track across the marshes. I last visited it in 2017. It is exactly the same design
Above
Fig 8: ‘Air Force Field’, site of decoy airfield Q147A at West Court Farm. (Colin Welch)
as the Luddesdown bunker but not in such good condition. There was a lot more modern graffiti on the walls. The escape hatch ladder is missing but it appeared to be fairly structurally sound’.
Historic England’s Heritage Gateway website states that Q96A was built on the site of Curtis and Harvey Ltd’s explosives factory. The control shelter is off-site, south of Boatrick House and nearly 200m from the decoy flare path, on the eastern side of a lane leading to The Poplars. Typically it is placed in the hedge adjacent to the lane and built above ground to avoid flooding. Several fighter squadrons operated from RAF Gravesend during the war. The airfield was attacked only a few times, perhaps because of the effectiveness of the decoys.
Researchers have considerable scope for seeking traces of other Second World War ‘fields of deception’. Their extant structures are too small to be seen on Google Earth, and being concealed among foliage, are likely unrecognisable from the nearest public road or right of way. Nevertheless, field walks (with landowners’ permission) might yield some surprises:
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Fig 9: Q96B (Luddesdown) control shelter showing (right) the platform above the control room, accessed via an escape hatch, on which a lamp mimicking an aircraft taxiing was installed
Bottom
Fig 10: Q96A (Cliffe Marshes) control room and exit (minus ladder) to the escape hatch and headlamp platform
RAF West Malling had decoys at Hammer Dyke, Capel (TQ 642 463) & Collier
Street (TQ 700 464).
RAF Detling’s dummy at Wichling (TQ 920 534) near Lenham operated as ‘Q’ and ‘K’ (daylight bombing) decoys. A Starfish decoy was also built on the site to protect Maidstone. Two surviving buildings and an access road were recorded in 2010 near Little Pivington Farm.
RAF Eastchurch (TQ 982 695) became a temporary decoy after a severe raid in 1940 until it became operational again in mid-1942.
RAF Lympne (TQ 113 355) was also used as a temporary decoy after suffering one of the worst airfield bombing attacks in the Battle of Britain. It did not operate at full strength again until June 1942.
RAF New Romney opened as an advanced landing ground for Hawker Typhoon ground-attack aircraft in July 1943 and was mimicked by decoy Q187A at
Midley, near Lydd and Q188A on nearby Romney Salts.
PHOTO CREDITS:
Manston decoy Clive Holden (Fig 1), Paul Tritton; Hawkinge decoy Colin Welch; Gravesend and Cliffe Marshes decoys Clive Holden.
RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING:
Fields of Deception, Colin Dobinson, Methuen 2013.
USEFUL WEBSITES:
https://www.aviationmuseum. net/AirfieldDecoys.htm
https://www.greatbritishlife. co.uk/people/the-lullingstone- decoy-7086692
https://www.abct.org.uk/airfields/ search-results/?area=Kent
https://www.battleofbritain1940. net/0006.html
https://www.blighty-at-war. net/decoy-ql-sites.htm
https://www.heritagegateway. org.uk/gateway