Details
LAUNTON
SP5924 A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)
1714/0/10057 RAF Bicester: Technical Site
01-DEC-05 Building No 109 (Watch Tower and Office)
GV II
Airfield watch tower and office. 1938, to 1934 type design. By A Bulloch of the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to drawing number 1959/34. Brickwork facing to reinforced concrete frame and flat roofs with asphalt finish.
PLAN: A square structure to flat roof with smaller central tower, also square rising two further storeys. The ground floor has the main watch office and rest room, with latrines, from which a tight spiral stair rises to the observation room in the tower; both levels with flat roof decks, the lower with raised brick parapet, and the upper with parapet and safety railing.
EXTERIOR: Steel casements across full width of lower floor, returned one light at ends, and smaller lights to other fronts, and door with over-light to rear (W) and south sides. The upper level glazed all round, some of the original horizontal glazing bars later removed. Small plinth, continuous frieze bands with projecting toe at roof levels.
INTERIOR: Iron stairs to top floor. Original doors and joinery.
HISTORY: The Technical Site at Bicester, separated from the Domestic Site, still has many of the original buildings, mostly of 1926 but with others added during successive phases of the 1930s Expansion Period. This observation tower - which replaced an earlier 1927 design - is typical of the design made in 1934; a total of 41 were built, this being one of only five remaining in brick as, after 1936, most were reinforced concrete. It represents the first attempt for a design of a military watch office. Located at the end of the main axis through the site from the guardhouse, closing the vista at the edge of the flying field, it is strongly representative of developments on flying fields in the mid 1930s. The now-familiar airfield landscape of runway, perimeter dispersals and flight control was only beginning to gain acceptance within the Air Ministry in the late 1930s, when increasing attention was being given in airfield planning to their ability to disperse and shelter aircraft from attack, ensure serviceable landing and take-off areas, and control movement: hence the increasingly sophisticated designs for control towers. Grouped with the 'C' type hangars which were built under Scheme F in 1936/7, this is a significant element of an uniquely important site.
Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard?s expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain?s strategic bomber force - and the manner in which its expansion reflected domestic political pressures as well as events on the world stage - in the period up to 1939. It was this policy of offensive deterrence that essentially dominated British air power and the RAF's existence as an independent arm of the military in the inter-war period, and continued to determine its shape and direction in the Second World War and afterwards during the Cold War. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester now forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews - once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation - to form and train as units.
For further historical details see Buildings Nos 79 and 137 (Type 'A' Hangars
