Padbury
PADBURY: Temporary Landing Ground
Operated by: Royal Flying Corps
Location: Just NW of Padbury rail station, about 2nm SSE of Buckingham town centre
Period of operation: 23rd and 24th September 1913
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
We have Mike Holder, a great friend of this 'Guide', to thank for discovering this very little known location, and for providing most of the maps etc. It appears that after the RFC had decided to send a detachment to HALTON in September 1913, six aircraft were detached to land on a field near Padbury and spend the night there. This field being identified as being suitable after a local recce flight, or flights, were made.
As Mike points out, we cannot be 100% certain this was the field actually used, as concrete proof does not exist (?), but it certainly fits the description.
The short article was published, along with the photo, in the Bucks Advertiser & Aylesbury News, on the 27th September 1913.
I may well be mistaken of course, but I think the photo is of a Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 type.
The local area and area views are from my Google Earth © derived database.
NOTES: I find this very interesting. In the early days those in charge of the Royal Flying Corps were having an uphill struggle to convince the Army top brass of the worth of aeroplanes. To be fair, they had certainly not been proven to be of use in a war scenerio, and of course in those days, their main worth was seen as being used for reconaissance. Therefore I suspect (?) that this exercise was designed to prove how adaptable the aeroplane could be, moving positions at short notice, to assist the Army in spotting duties etc.
This aspect no doubt being in front of the minds of the top brass in the RFC as, in central Europe, the political situation was descending into turmoil. If so, they were soon to be proven correct. Just a few months after this exercise, the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, on the 28th June 1914, and Germany went into, typically as it turned out, full on war to conquer all of Europe. The allied countries had other ideas of course, in that such aspirations had to be resisted at any cost. Hence Great Britain declaring war a month later on the 28th July 1914.
Might be mistaken of course, but my impression of WW1 is that fighter aircraft were developed, initially to shoot down both artillery spotting balloons plus the aeroplanes engaged in similar duties. Pretty soon to develop into fighter aircraft on both sides, fighting each other, their main purpose therefore becoming, to a large extent, sidelined.
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