Temporary steel planking or reinforcement on airfields

In March/April 1943 a runway was laid by Company A of the USAAF
833rd Engineers Aviation Battalion at Christchurch using BRC/British Reinforced
Concrete Mesh.
I believe that the 405 FG found some problems witha "bow wave" when taking off from this.The runway was apparently "stabilised" in 1944 pre-D-Day.

The main runway at Tain was approx one third PSP there was quite a lot of it lying about on the range. And on the Harrier force we used PSA (Plank Surface Airfield?) for the strips, but it wasnt used in a roll it was all fitted indivuidally by the Sappers.

Yes it could be slippery, we had a couple of aircraft slip off the MEXE (Military Experimental Establishment) pad.

And just remembered that at Leuchars our TA Sappers dug a hole on the southern taxiway during one camp then filled it with rubble and put metal planking on the top and then we had a Nimrod fly in and taxi on it to test it.

Peter wrote:

Just a thought, was it slippery when wet or did military issue boots not slip? I seem to remember walking on a modern type steel mesh in the rain wearing casual shoes and it was a challenge.

This is a very good point.

In Major Grigson's paper on the subject he states: Requirement 11 - the track should possess a reasonably non-skid surface. This is important because of the danger which slippery surfaces present to aircraft landing in cross winds.

I suspect PSP is worse in this respect when compared to all the other systems. It retained significant amounts of moisture below the planks after rain, resulting in liquid mud pumping up through the holes when then loaded by heavy aircraft. This was most undesirable and frequently led to the strip becoming unusable for a period.

There was an improvement when the planks were laid on a bed of straw. This also helped reduce dust clouds in hot weather.

Up until 25 October 1944 the US Army engineers laid 18 PSP and 22 SMT airfields and a further 30 'other types of track' in NW Europe. (In addition 42 existing airfields required repairs to concrete and 64 untracked landing grounds were serviced)