RAF High Wycombe

RAF High Wycombe stands in the wooded hills near Walters Ash in Buckinghamshire. Built in the late 1930s as a secure home for RAF Bomber Command, its buildings were designed to look like ordinary houses and a village church. Tunnels link every block to an underground Operations Block 17 metres below ground. During the Second World War the station was called Southdown and its postal address was GPO High Wycombe. A small unpaved airfield at nearby Lacey Green handled flights until late 1945. The station’s wartime commander Wing Commander Alan Oakeshott chose the site for its natural cover and later gave his name to the welfare centre opened in 2011. After the war it became home to NATO’s Allied Forces North Western Europe and later to RAF Air Command. Since 2009 the station has reviewed UFO sightings to check for unauthorised military flights. The actor David Jason opened the Oakeshott Welfare Centre in July 2011. Visitors find a working military headquarters set among preserved trees and camouflaged buildings. The welfare centre bears the station’s motto Non Sibi, meaning ‘not for ourselves’. A parade through Princes Risborough marked the station’s Freedom of Wycombe District in 2012. The site links to nearby Lacey Green where wartime flights took off. The station’s badge shows a thunderbolt and two pillars recalling its support for Bomber Command.