RAF Headcorn

Headcorn, about two miles north-east of the Kent village of the same name, was one of the temporary Advanced Landing Grounds thrown up in 1943 to rehearse the airfield-building that would be needed in France after the invasion. For security the RAF called it Lashenden, after a hamlet to the south-west, in an attempt to mislead the enemy. There was no concrete here: farmland was requisitioned, ponds filled in, and a surface of steel tracking and coconut matting pegged down to give an all-weather strip.

The field opened in July 1943 and quickly filled with fighters. Spitfire IXs of Nos. 403 and 421 Squadrons RCAF flew from Headcorn in the autumn of 1943, and in 1944 the United States Ninth Air Force moved in, the 362nd Fighter Group operating three squadrons of Republic P-47 Thunderbolts in the ground-attack role as the Normandy campaign opened. Mustangs also used the strip during the American tenure.

With the armies advancing across the Continent the ALG had served its purpose, and Headcorn closed in 1944, reverting to farmland. The site lived on, however: a private grass airfield reopened on the ground in the late 1960s, and the Lashenden Air Warfare Museum on the field preserves the memory of its wartime years.