Strange... during the Cold War, NATO standards included a parallel RWY in our countries !
But when crossing the Channel, don't find that in the UK... was there a peculiar reason the UK did follow this NATO decison ?
6 RCAF Bomber Group (organisation, airfields, squadrons, aircarft, and their 70 crashes in Belgium (location, crew, evasion lines, cemeteries, PoW Camps, etc...). Busy for a couple of years !!!!!!
Because all our airfields were well constructed by the end of the war, and we didn't require parallel R/Ws?
We only had multi direction R/Ws to enable aircraft to land in differeing wind conditions, and this gradually got reduced to one runway in use on most airfields as aircraft technology improved.
Dosen't seem to have been a requirement, ie not the number of moves to require parallel runway on military airfields.
We also had the former German airfields with similar RWY lay out as the RAF and that also got gradually reduced to 2 then 1 RWY
But the parallel RWY's were built on the ex-German fields as from the beginning of the fifties
And standard on all brand new ones built in Belgium as from 1952 up to 1956 !
Look at all the ghost airfields in NE France... all are from de 50ties and have a 'reserve RWY' !
I have access to a 'Schematic general layout' plan of a typical NATO airfield that shows clearly a parallel TWY of 22.5m wide and same length as the main RWY that can be used in case the main RWY is damaged/destroyed... reason I am surprised not to see this standard in the UK ?
What about Bruggen, Wildenrath, And the now Niederheim RAF Weeze... looks like there is a wide parallel TWY too ?
6 RCAF Bomber Group (organisation, airfields, squadrons, aircarft, and their 70 crashes in Belgium (location, crew, evasion lines, cemeteries, PoW Camps, etc...). Busy for a couple of years !!!!!!
We also had the former German airfields with similar RWY lay out as the RAF and that also got gradually reduced to 2 then 1 RWY
But the parallel RWY's were built on the ex-German fields as from the beginning of the fifties
And standard on all brand new ones built in Belgium as from 1952 up to 1956 !
Look at all the ghost airfields in NE France... all are from de 50ties and have a 'reserve RWY' !
I have access to a 'Schematic general layout' plan of a typical NATO airfield that shows clearly a parallel TWY of 22.5m wide and same length as the main RWY that can be used in case the main RWY is damaged/destroyed... reason I am surprised not to see this standard in the UK ?
What about Bruggen, Wildenrath, And the now Niederheim RAF Weeze... looks like there is a wide parallel TWY too ?
6 RCAF Bomber Group (organisation, airfields, squadrons, aircarft, and their 70 crashes in Belgium (location, crew, evasion lines, cemeteries, PoW Camps, etc...). Busy for a couple of years !!!!!!
We have parallel taxiways, Wartime use only runways (NATOI Class 'B') and in some cases, motorways or duel carriege ways such as the A1 at Woolfox Lodge where there is a Jaguar dispersal extant adjacent to the lay-by on the north bound carriegeway (well it was still there a few years ago) . Changhi, Singapore is the same, the lamp posts are able to fold down to enable the road to be an alternative runway.
You can tell a builder from an archaeologist by the size of his trowel. Mine is a small one!
Interesting detail about the Jaguar dispersal on the A1 Motorway & folded lamps system !
Are the lamps still in places ?
Are there other existing sites in the UK ?
Thierry
6 RCAF Bomber Group (organisation, airfields, squadrons, aircarft, and their 70 crashes in Belgium (location, crew, evasion lines, cemeteries, PoW Camps, etc...). Busy for a couple of years !!!!!!
Surely a parallel runway is as prone to bombing and airfield attack as the main! Most attack profiles were designed to run at an angle across the main runway, not straight down it.
I always thought the parrallel runway idea was predominatly an American idea used in the post-war development of European and NATO airfilelds. Their aircraft types usually needed longer runways and the numbers in use ad the possibilities of blocking the runway necesatated a second runway - both reasons would preclude the practical building of relief landing grounds - something that we had plenty of in Britain.
Also European airfields were alot closer to any possible action - not much room for messing around with one runway.
The Jaguar was designed to be operated from roads and rough strips if needs be as part of a NATO requrement. The roadside Jag dispersals also existed in Germany where they were used, there is cracking footage of one landing around a bend in the autobahn!
The RAF wanted parallel runways to scramble fighter aircraft more quickly, following tests using a standard airfield as a single,
plus Carnaby (no - not me! ) as a dual runway.
The idea was abandoned.
I remember an adverse comment, possibly from the Cabinet, re the Air Ministry's obsession with 'covering the UK with concrete'.
TNA: AIR 20/7491 Parallel runways at key fighter bases: proposal 1951-52
Graham
Plan A is always more effective when the problem you are working on understands that Plan B will involve the use of dynamite
Looks like the British had another view on the building and use of parallel RWY's as then dictated by NATO ... !
6 RCAF Bomber Group (organisation, airfields, squadrons, aircarft, and their 70 crashes in Belgium (location, crew, evasion lines, cemeteries, PoW Camps, etc...). Busy for a couple of years !!!!!!
Olympusman: Depends what you mean by parallel runways. For example, London (Heathrow) has parallel runways. However, the RAF airfields built from scratch in Germany in the early 1950s (Laarbruch, Bruggen, Wildenrath, Geilenkirchen) were not built with parallel runways but they had two parallel taxiways, one of which was slightly wider than the other and this doubled for use as a runway in an emergency. These characteristics are clearly visible in a 1963 picture of Laarbruch, published in "RAF Germany Since 1945" by Bill Taylor, pp 99. No doubt Google Earth will show things as they are today.
For example, in my days at Bruggen, every year the aircrew would practice landing and taking off from the wider (northern) taxiway. This would keep their skills up and the ability to use the taxiway came in useful once when repairs had to be carried out to the runway and we could keep flying uninterrupted by the work. I think that had any new airfields been built from scratch in the UK in the early 1950s then they would have been built to the NATO pattern. However, no new airfields were built and existing sites were upgraded, as was the case at locations in Germany etc. At these sites, I seem to recall that the NATO pattern was not always followed.
Some excellent gen on the NATO airfields built in France can be found in the book "US Air Force in France 1950 - 1967" by Lt Col Jerome J McAuliffe USAF Retd (pub by Milspec Press 2005, ISBN 0 9770371 1
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) as a dual runway.
