Shropshire Routes to Roots

1. Background to aircraft crashes

Introduction

These pages look at military aircraft that crashed in the area around Oswestry. Oswestry is a large market town in the North West of Shropshire, England, very close to the Welsh border. It saw much aircraft activity during both World Wars.

Airfield locations

The lowlands of the Cheshire/Shropshire plains to the higher land of the eastern uplands of Wales area contained many wartime airfields as shown in this image. Key to plan: Speke Hooton Park Little Sutton Sealand Hawarden Wrexham. Cranage. Tilstock. Tern Hill. Hodnet Shawbury Bridleway Gate Sleap Rednal Montford Bridge Atcham High Ercall Bratton Cosford

Wartime airfield locations in 1943 Larger image, in a new window [42kb] [Reproduced with kind permission of Derrick Pratt and Mike Grant]

Since flying began Shropshire has always had many airfields, but it was the late 1930s that saw the major development. The whole county became dotted with airfields. Many were satellites to larger ones and some were just grass landing strips with aircraft storage facilities. The end of World War II saw the very rapid decline in the number of airfields.

More information and a list of airfields in Shropshire can be found on this page: Airfields of Shropshire (Opens in a new window).

Air corridors

Aircraft did not just fly anywhere in the sky. They were, and still are, controlled and flew in "corridors." More information can be found on this page: Air corridors over Shropshire (Opens in a new window).

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