Sixty years on it is hard to imagine the plateau on top of the Blackdown Hills was once without the scars of the three airfields built there during the Second World War. However, with the passage of time, memories of Culmhead, Upottery and Dunkeswell as they were in their heyday are fading fast, or being lost altogether as many of those once-young men and women based there are with us no longer.

It is for these reasons that the South West Airfields Heritage Trust feels the importance of the role that these airfields played should be acknowledged and also that the memory of those who served on them should be perpetuated for the benefit of future generations who will be able to enjoy a freedom that was by no means certain in those dark days of war between 1939 and 1945.

By today’s standards such destruction of a pleasant landscape seems unthinkable, but, for those around at the time, the speed at which these airfields were built was an amazing feat of man’s endeavour. This was the direct result of the attack on our Island and the threat of imminent invasion.