Starveall Farm WW2
STARVEALL FARM WW2: SLG (Satellite Landing Ground)
Operated by: 33 and 39 MU (Maintenance Units)
Location: S of the B4437, about 2.5nm NW of Woodstock and roughly 10.5nm NW of Oxford city centre
Period of operation: 1941 to 1945
Probable Landing Runs? E/W 500 grass Possibly N/S (?) 370 grass
Note: As these SLGs were basically for aircraft storage; holding areas to replace losses at operational airfields. No 'hard' runways were provided that I am aware of, although it appears that some may have been provided with steel mesh reinforcement such as Sommerfeld Track. So today no visual evidence of runways exist, except perhaps after a long dry spell.
It is easy to see how this location was selected as the aircraft could be dispersed into the woods of King's Wood to the west and Wooton Wood to the south.
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
It was actually Mr Graham Frost, another great friend of this 'Guide', who pointed out to me that this location was not listed. I did have it on my Google Earth© derived database, but in the wrong location. (See below for more about solving this problem). After struggling to make any sense of where this SLG was, I sent out a distress call to Mike Holder, and as expected he solved the issue. Being once an RAF navigator, his skills at map reading and finding extra supporting information have been of considerable benefit to this 'Guide'.
The photo of the 'Robins' hangar was obtained from Facebook.
The local area and area views are from my Google Earth© derived database.
A CAUTIONARY TALE
Mike Holder very kindly sent me this map showing where the map reference location available from Wikipedia is. Some distance away from the actual location and just NE of Woodstock, which, as it happens, is also where I had mistakenly pinned it on my database many years ago. It is of course a curse of living in modern times that although at face value it is so easy and quick to obtain information on the inter-web, so much of it is incorrect. And indeed, in many cases dangerously misleading, like with sat-nav.
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