The Norfolk Red Barns

Could the Eagle have landed??

I picked up on on a small article in an old issue Airfield Review written by Paul Doyle entitled “THE EAGLE MAY HAVE LANDED”. The story goes that there were a number of sites in Norfolk and possibly one in Surrey that had been supposedly cleared for Luftwaffe Landing Grounds. Some of the notable features are;

1 = Most, if not all had hedges and trees removed to give one large landing field of roughly 200 acres and the fields were bare of crops and rolled hard.

2 = Each had one or two large red barns of “Dutch” shape, these were all easily accessible.

3 = All of the barns were constructed in the late 1930’s. The company that supplied the framework was Head Wrightson & Co, soon to become famous for the construction of the Bellman Hangar.

Couple of photos of the two Barns at Sporle, Norfolk here;

great story from the RAF WAtton site about German Landing grounds references Public Records Office (Air2/4557).

www.rafwatton.info/History/Memories/Germ...bid/122/Default.aspx

EDIT: updated link rafwatton.info/german-landing-grounds-in...olk-by-peter-meston/

PNK, I wrote those words, or rather quoted and commented on them, in Brit's Mil Airfields!

No comment from me because I thought they were well known to most people with an interest in East Anglia and WWII in general. There was a large debate about the barns on Key some time back in this thread:

forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php...&highlight=Red+barns

The Red Barn Guestwick
These barns were constructed on farms owned by Dutch farmers there were rumours of collaboration with the Germans during WW2 as most of the Dutch farmers originated from the area close to the Dutch German borders. The Barns themselves had bright a bright Red roof a company from the Isle of Man was contracted to paint these roofs in a 3 colour camoflage, a day later it rained washing most of the "paint" down the drain. It was found that the contractors had mixed mud into the paint to enhance coverage properties.
The Dutch were masters at irrigation and soon flattened the landscape by filling in ditches and removing hedges, which quite possibly lead to rumours of these now quite vast flat areas becoming landing strips. Timber barriers were errected in these vast fields just incase aircraft did try to land in them. I dont know where the steelwork came from for the Guestwick Barn but I'm informed that at least 2 German steel errectors were employed to errect it. As far as I can tell these barns which had been constructed throughout norfolk had been constructed by a single company from syndicate of Dutch farmers. I'm still looking into the story but I'm told that after the war some of these Dutchmen were head hunted by the Dutch military and returned to Holland to help with drainage of areas affected by the Dam Busters operation. I will post more info when available.

The two Red Barns at Guestwick: