Beamond End
BEAMOND END: Temporary flying site during WW2
Operated by: U S Army, perhaps assisted by the USAAF?
Location: Using the A404 between Beamond End and Hazelmere, but closer to Beamond End
Period of operation: Almost certainly before D-Day in June 1944?
The local view was obtained from Google Earth ©. The area view is from my Google Earth © derived database.
NOTES: In October 2023 Terry Clark, a good friend of this 'Guide', contacted me to say that his sister had found a copy of John Young's journal written during WW2. In it was this observation referring to notes he had made about military Piper L-4 Cubs operating in this area: "I saw several of these Cubs land and take off on the main road from Beamond End to Hazlemere during US Army exercises."
I can only blame myself for trying to record as many flying sites as possible in the U.K. As I was warned over twenty years ago when starting this project, an impossible task. How true! But, at least a start has been made, now with over 7000 listings, and many, many more to add. Some years ago I decided that a flying site was simply having a record of where somebody had become airborne.
It has obviously become, for me, something of an obsession, but, I still find the quest utterly fascinating. Still cannot quite believe just how many flying sites we have in the U.K. Terry and I cannot be sure, but we strongly suspect, that in the lead up to D-Day, a great many US Army vehicles were probably hidden away in the woods just south of the A404? Even today, signs of straight tracks can be found in those woods. It all seems to make sense, with Piper L-4 Grasshoppers providing communications for some exercises. Mainly because they could deliver written documents and maps etc. Plus ferrying around senior officers.
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