Brackla

57°32'34"N 003°54'33"W

runway: 05/23 - (estim.)1750x..m - SMT

Brackla airfield (Also known as RAF Brackla and Cawdor airfield) was an airfield 180 kilometers north of Edinburgh.
The airfield was built in 1941 as a Relief Landing Ground (RLG) for RAF Dalcross, todays Inverness Airport, located about six miles east of the latter. It came supplied with four Type T2 hangars, and was surfaced with wire-mesh runways and concrete taxi tracks and parkings. Being a RLG, it had no flying units of its own, but it was used by Whitleys of 19 OTU (Operational Training Unit), and Oxfords of both 14 and 19 (Pilot) Advanced Flying Units (PAFU). Brackla's opening forced the already existent Brackley, hundreds of miles away in Northamptonshire, to change its name to Croughton.
The alternative, renaming this airfield after the nearby village of Cawdor, appearantly was rejected because of its links with the supposedly unlucky Shakespeare 'Scottish play'.
In 1944 the airfield became the Aircrew Allocation Centre, where airmen were sent for a month whilst final postings were found for them where they would be most valued. In early 1945 hundreds of surplus aircraft, including around 130 Halifax bombers (some of which straight from the factory), were ferried to the airfield and scrapped.

RAF Brackla closed towards the end of 1946. Most of its buildings were removed along with the wire-mesh runways, with complete abandonment by the early 1950s. Although much of the concrete perimeter track has been removed over the years, large sections can still be found. The path of the taxi track and dispersal parkings is clearly evident in aerial views and depicted on OS maps together with the dispersal areas. Very little survives of the original buildings.


The remains of RAF Brackla in 2005 (Google Earth)