Dummy airfield
Although there was an advanced radar-controlled searchlight in Lower Froyle (see The Searchlight) in the Froyle at War menu, there was also a dummy airfield right on the Parish Boundary at Holybourne Down. The idea was that this ‘device’ would be fired up on warning of approaching enemy aircraft whose targets were the two nearby airfields at Odiham and Lasham.
Location
The picture above (from Google Earth) shows the approximate area in 2008. We have searched all available aerial photographs in the NMRA at Swindon and cannot find any that show the original.
However, according to local residents who were young lads at the time, the control bunker for lighting the various fires that were lit during a raid to mis-direct enemy bombers was situated somewhere along the hedge line marked in blue.
These ‘airfields’ also had dummy aeroplanes, which may be the reason for a story that I was told (I cannot remember who told me , which is very annoying!) about discovering two Spitfires in the middle of a field. In our discussion we postulated that the aircraft may have run out of fuel on finals to either Lasham or Odiham, but it could well be that he had stumbled across the dummy airfield and two of its aircraft.