Control Tower (Building 340), Upper Heyford Airbase, Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire

Description

UPPER HEYFORD

1715/0/10012 Control Tower (Building 340), Upper He
07-APR-08 yford Airbase

II
Military airfield control tower of 1950-2 with associated blast wall and magnetometer base. Currently identified as Upper Heyford Building 340.

EXTERIOR: Built around a steel frame, it comprises a central, red brick, two-storey tower (33ft 6ins by 32 ft 6ins) surmounted with an octagonal steel-framed glazed visual control room which gives a 360 degree view of the complete aerodrome with the main runway to the north. Mounted alongside on the flat roof (which has metal railings around its edge) are two ariels and, at the north-west corner, a small observation penthouse, possibly for signalling. Flanking the tower to east, west and south are single-storey flat-roofed wings housing electrical gear and offices. The east and west flanking wings (each 25ft by 23ft) also have railings around their edges. The tower has small, square-paned Crittall-type metal windows, with a projecting (probably added) oriel-like booth to the central first-floor window on the north side.

INTERIOR: The main entrance is at the rear of the right-hand wing. This gives on to a corridor which runs the width of the building. The right-hand wing contains two front rooms, one which housed GPO equipment and one the monitor room. At the rear of the wing was a rest room and female lavatory. The front half of the main tower was the radio equipment room, with officers' lavatory, signals workshop and staircase to the rear. The left wing contained ancillary rooms, including the main medium voltage switchgear room, accessed from external doors. The small wing to the south housed a ventilating plant room and pyro store.

In the tower concrete stairs with a metal handrail lead to the first floor, largely occupied by the radar control room. Double doors give access on to the flat roofs of the east and west wings. The other first-floor rooms comprised a rest room and the SATCO's office. A stairwell at the rear contains a steep steel ladder leading up to the rear of the visual control room. This has pull-down, purple-tinted, sun screens to the windows and sound-proof tiles to the walls and ceiling.

One ground-floor door has a hand-painted shield recording its occupancy (probably near the end of the station's life) by the Air Weather Service. The greater part of the control tower's telephone and other equipment has been stripped although some switchgear and housings do survive.

ASSOCIATED FEATURES: Immediately to the front (north) and west of the building are prefabricated 2m tall sand-filled blast walls. Similarly protected is a fuel tank (itself not of historic interest) between the tower and the gravelled square.

Ten metres north of the blast wall is a gravelled square, c.20m across, defined by concrete-kerbs and concrete posts which formerly supported a wire fence. In the centre of the square is the 1.5m high bollard-like metal housing of a magnetometer, an instrument (removed) which detected radar signals coming from the east.

HISTORY: A Royal Flying Corps station was established at Upper Heyford in 1915. In the 1920s it became one of the RAF's bomber stations under the Home Defence Expansion Scheme promoted by Lord Trenchard. During WWII it was used as a training station by Bomber Command. In the early 1950s the base was among those which passed to the USAF's Strategic Air Command, one of four which lay well inland from the vulnerable east of England. It then was extensively remodelled: structures erected at this time including new runways and bomb stores, the control tower and four Nose Docking Sheds for aircraft maintenance (q.v.). Between 1953 and 1965 B-47 SAC Stratojets operated out of here. The base then passed to USAF Europe and for the remainder of the 1960s it was mainly used by reconnaissance aircraft including U2s, RF101 Voodoos, and later Phantoms. Then in 1970 a new generation of advanced bomber, the F-111, was deployed here. Its all-weather capability and technical sophistication made the aircraft one of the key components of NATO's nuclear deterrent in the 1970s, it being the sole carrier of the USA's intermediate range nuclear deterrent in Europe. Upper Heyford was the only F-111 Wing in Europe until the allocation of F-111s to RAF Lakenheath in 1977.
After 1984 and the introduction of Cruise Missiles the F-111s' purpose became the hunting down of the Warsaw Pact's mobile SS20 missiles. In 1986 F-111s from Upper Heyford and Lakenheath attracted worldwide attention for a retaliatory strike on Libya, while in 1990 Upper Heyford's F-111s participated in operation Desert Shield after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait. In 1993 in the defence draw-down after the end of the Cold War, and in part due to the obsolescence of the F-111, the aircraft was withdrawn from the base. Shortly afterwards Upper Heyford was returned to the RAF which declared it surplus to military needs.

The control tower was one of seven produced c.1950-3 to drawing 5223a/51. Four were at the Very Heavy Bomber bases of Upper Heyford, Brize Norton, Fairford, and Greenham Common; one at Mildenhall tanker aircraft base; and two at the upgraded Biggin Hill and North Weald fighter stations. Upper Heyford's stands centrally within the south half of the flying field, south of and overlooking the main runway. It operated as the weather and radio receiver for the airbase and was central to its operation.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: listed primarily for historic reasons, Upper Heyford's control tower dates from 1950-2 when the former RAF base was remodelled for USAF's Strategic Air Command. Structures erected during the Cold War (1946-89) are among the most potent physical manifestations of the global division between capitalism and communism that shaped the history of the second half of the C20. Upper Heyford was among the key Cold War defence sites in England in the 1970s and 1980s when USAF F-111s based here provided part of NATO's European intermediate range nuclear deterrent. The control tower was central, as its name suggests, to the base's operation and is an integral part of the complex. Also included in the listing are its blast walls and the magnetometer and its surrounding square immediately to the north.

SOURCES: Former RAF Upper Heyford Conservation Plan (3 vols., September 2005); P. Francis, Control Towers: The Development of the Control Tower on RAF Stations in the UK (1993), 96-7

Reasons for Listing

Upper Heyford's control tower listed primarily for historic reasons, dates from 1950-2 when the former RAF base was remodelled for USAF's Strategic Air Command. Structures erected during the Cold War (1946-89) are among the most potent physical manifestations of the global division between capitalism and communism that shaped the history of the second half of the C20. Upper Heyford was among the key Cold War defence sites in England in the 1970s and 1980s when USAF F-111s based here provided part of NATO's European intermediate range nuclear deterrent. The control tower was central, as its name suggests, to the base's operation and is an integral part of the complex. Also included in the listing are its blast walls and the magnetometer housing and its surrounding square immediately to the north.

External Links

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