A History of Haddenham Airfield

1945-1946

Closing Down

For the rest of 1945 and into 1946 Haddenham was little more than a backwater where little was done, certainly very few aircraft came or went.

In March of 1945 the Overseas Packing Unit moved in. They were responsible for the crating of equipment which was bound for overseas use by the RAF. Most of the work was the despatching of radar and radio navigation beacons, such as ‘GEE’ and ‘LORAN’ to units as far and wide as Singapore, Naples, Poona, Tunisia and the Persian Gulf. The packing unit left in April 1946, about their last function being to de-requisition Hopefield House, long the home of those posted to Haddenham.

Also here for a short time was the 3rd Reception Centre which was a kind of half-way house for personnel between postings, the end of the war in Europe being the main cause for so much movement. It arrived in May but was gone by October.
Ken Harrup arrived at the end of July from Swanage to find nothing but a vast expanse of tents, even the cookhouse was a marquee. So many tents in fact that he didn’t even realise he was on an airfield. He recalls that the whole place was terrible especially the state of the water and his abiding thought of Haddenham is that he should have been inoculated before arriving!
Before he was posted to Glatton he was given a driving course and remembers learning to drive a Crossley lorry around Aylesbury. The courses run here at the time were more a way of relieving boredom for the hundreds of men here than for any greater good.

The other main unit that was at Haddenham during this short time was a Radar Mechanics school which arrived from RAF Renscombe Down running courses from the huts and domestic buildings initially put up by the Glider Training Squadron four long years before.

‘RAF Thame’ finally closed on April 30th 1946.