Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Long Marston Airfield lies near the village of Long Marston in Warwickshire, about three miles southwest of Stratford-upon-Avon, on the site of a former Royal Air Force bomber training station. Once home to microlight, gliding and general aviation flying, the field has since been redeveloped for housing, so it is now of interest to simulator pilots chiefly as a piece of aviation history rather than as a live destination. Its ICAO code, EGBL, has since been reallocated to Alscot Airfield.
Long Marston Airfield began life as a wartime RAF satellite station and later became a general and sports aviation site used by microlight, gliding and flying-school operators, as well as a well-known motorsport and festival venue. The site has since been redeveloped for housing under the Long Marston Garden Village scheme, making it a field of largely historical interest to a virtual pilot rather than one that can currently be flown into.
The airfield sits in Warwickshire, England, close to the village of Long Marston and roughly three miles southwest of Stratford-upon-Avon. No specific airspace classification or controlled airspace detail for the site is given in the available material.
The airfield had three physical runway pairs. Runway 04/22 was a hard, lit surface of 2426 feet. Runway 16/34 was also hard and lit, at 1883 feet. Runway 02/20 was a grass runway of 1774 feet, also lit. Field elevation is 138 feet.
The land had already seen use as an aerodrome as far back as 1917 during the First World War, though flying activity ceased after the armistice. The airfield proper was built in 1940 on requisitioned farmland by the contractor John Laing & Son Ltd for the Air Ministry, opening under RAF control in 1941 with three tarmac runways laid out in the standard RAF 'A' pattern, an air traffic control tower, two T2 hangars, a B1 hangar, dispersal pans, pillboxes and billets for up to 1,000 personnel. The first RAF flying unit, No. 24 Operational Training Unit of Bomber Command, arrived on 15 March 1943 flying Armstrong Whitworth Whitleys, Avro Ansons and Vickers Wellingtons as a satellite to RAF Honeybourne. No. 1681 Bomber (Defence) Flight, flying Hawker Hurricanes and Curtiss Tomahawks to simulate fighter attacks on OTU crews, used the field as a satellite from RAF Pershore between July 1943 and August 1944. American units also flew from Long Marston: the USAAF's 8th Air Force ran a Combat Crew Replacement Centre there with B-24D Liberators, and in March and April 1944 the 50th Fighter Squadron of the 8th Reconnaissance Group briefly operated twin-engined P-38 Lightnings from the site, though the squadron was never made fully operational. No. 24 OTU withdrew on 24 July 1945. After the war the RAF wound down its use of the airfield, which passed to the care of No. 8 Maintenance Unit and later No. 3 Maintenance Group until 1954, with brief further use as a relief landing ground for training schools flying Airspeed Oxfords between 1952 and 1954. The station was officially closed in the early-to-mid 1950s and the land returned to its private owners, after which it was renamed Long Marston Airfield and used for six decades for motorsport, including the Shakespeare County Raceway dragstrip and grasstrack events, clay shooting, and large music festivals such as Global Gathering, Godskitchen, the Bulldog Bash and the Phoenix Festival. The site also had a television connection, having been used by ATV in 1981 to film the burning of the Crossroads motel set.
The airfield has been acquired by developers and renamed Fernleigh Park, forming part of the Long Marston Garden Village scheme, one of the UK government's designated garden villages announced in January 2017. Planning permission has seen an initial phase of over 400 homes built by CALA and Bovis Homes, with a wider masterplan providing for up to 3,500 new dwellings on the former airfield land. As a result the site no longer functions as an active aerodrome, and its former ICAO code, EGBL, has since been reallocated to Alscot Airfield.
