Airfield Site Plans - How Accurate?

Airfield site plans often have differences to what was actually built. In some cases they show what was planned but changed when actually built. I always try to get a good aerial photo of a site to confirm was was really built.
The plans available are those that have been saved and the final plan may not have survived.

Agree with Peter it is quite common to have huts aligned differently to that shown on the ground.

Always a problem when huts are incorrectly identified on the plan. At Compton Bassett for example they are shown on the 1945 plan as handcraft, when the camp opened before that but type was even invented.

Also this from the Pocklington thread

www.airfieldresearchgroup.org.uk/forum/y...gton?start=70#142733

Hello folks

Just a reminder that the provenance of the above plan is a bit of a mystery. It's dated 1985 and is about 40 degrees out of alignment with the real world. Also NB that runway '10' [sic] should properly be marked '01' (i.e. 010 degrees magnetic, to the nearest 10 degrees), although runway markings were not used in WW2.

This plan was the basis for Bernard's Magnificent Model - so also shows R/W '10' - nice one Bernard!

If anyone's interested, I have a rather higher-resolution and better definition version of the plan with some accompanying notes (PDF). If you want a copy, please drop me a quickie on admin at toms12 dot plus dot com HTH.

Regards to all

John Nott'num

I suspect another source of differences is later changes and additions since the date of the plan. Current remains will reflect the last built. Again period aerial photos can help resolve this sort of anomaly, providing coverage is there for the relevant dates/years. This is not always the case and mismatched dates for drawings and air photos can cause even more confusion.

Many of the plans I come across at The National Archives include the word "proposed" and invariably there is no final or agreed version, however the proposed version will normally be overdrawn on an earlier plan.

In some cases large scale (or is it small scale!!!) OS maps can show detailed layouts and these can generally be relied in for accuracy, the downside is that only disused airfields appeared at first and not until the late fifties so cannot be relied upon to be complete.