Brockton
BROCKTON: No.30 SLG (Satellite Landing Ground)
Military users: 9 MU COSFORD & 33 MU HIGH ERCALL
Location: Roughly 0.5nm ENE of Brockton, just SSE of Kemberton, about 3nm E of Ironbridge
Period of operation: 1941 to ?
NOTES: It is claimed that here in 1941 at least, security was very tight, and camouflage and ‘deception’ techniques painstakingly employed. Why? Because the latest Spitfires and Hurricanes were ‘stored’ here.
I find this whole aspect of WW2 thoroughly fascinating. For example I cannot imagine too many German spies would last long in an area like this before being sussed. But, the big problem with aircraft is that they do have a marked tendency to fly - and when taking off and landing need to get pretty close to the ground to do so. This sort of stuff obviously needed to be explained to the ‘top brass’ who it seems hadn’t a clue about the ‘real’ world and unfortunately, as it worked out, such a line of communication didn’t exist. Indeed, such a prospect was severely discouraged - orders and information move down the ranks, not up them.
Even today, in the EU alone, we have utterly stupid military regimes, commanded by idiots, (take Greece for example), who have a totally nonsensical attitude towards military aviation secrecy.
ANOTHER ASPECT
Let me put it another way. I’ll bet a pound to a penny every farmer, farm hand and milk maid in this area knew the Hurricanes and Spitfires were arriving/departing. Because they saw them even if they couldn’t identify them! It’s impossible to disguise an aircraft when it’s flying at low level. Even if the gates were freely opened to local people they couldn’t possibly ascertain anything of the slightest importance let alone guess at performance figures etc.
Simply looking at or even taking photographs of the aircraft, the whole situation is nigh on a total nonsense. As the ‘Cold War’ bore testament to, photographs did lend some clues to ‘so called’ experts, but were so often wide of the mark as to be useless in real terms.
It might of course be thought that the numbers of aircraft stored here might be useful, but even that is doubtful as it was simply a holding point and the amount of aircraft brought in and flown out would need to be closely monitored over quite a long period to be meaningful. And of course, this site was only one of many scattered around the country.
What you need are spies in the centres of production and command centres. The first to assess the rate of production and the second for the scale of losses. It seems pretty clear these days that the Germans lacked this information and could not fully appreciate just how many aircraft the RAF had at its disposal during this critical period in the early years. But, I suppose, at least it provided some local employment along the way.
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