Airfield Opening / Closing Dates

The only sure way of getting dates for RAF airfields closing to flying has to be the Form 540 (Operations Record Book) assuming it exists at the time of the closure. Often opening dates are reported inaccurately too. One has to read the 540 properly as oten it is just the SHQ opening - not necessary the airfield. Everything is fine if you say exactly what you mean such as SHQ opened on such a such date, followed by the airfield on blah blah blah date.

Alternatively, where exact dates are not clear or ambiguous, just use different scales of vagueness

Month + Year
Season +Year
Early/Mid/Late + Year (or indeed decade)
Early/Mid/Late + WW1 or WW2

All F540's are at TNA and the Squadron ORB's are available to view, albeit with a logo across the pages, unless you pay for a download. A caveat to that is the the more recent decades have not been released under the 30 year rule (I think) and are either held by the unit, if still active or AHB. Station and other non-squadron ORB's are not availble to view online but it would be interesting to find out if they were in the pipeline.

Sadly post war ORB's seem to be sparse on information with many squadrons only completing a monthly summary under various key subjects, e.g. Operations, Training, Admin etc. I suspect this was probably way it was supposed to be completed in peacetime but I haven't seen a post-war instruction on completing 540's

If there are any names in the records then more likely to be 70 years. I think that is the period that archives normally work to.