Secret Hampshire: Forgotten legacy of New Forest's WW2 airfields

A New Forest heritage account is highlighting the wartime airfields that still leave traces in the landscape, including concrete “BL” letters—pundit codes used so pilots could identify locations from the air. The feature points to how each major airfield typically included an underground battle headquarters, built to coordinate defenses if invaded, though access today is impossible because the bunker was backfilled with gravel around 1960. The New Forest Airfields collection and memorial at Holmsley South also documents both larger sites and smaller D-Day installations, as well as an emergency landing ground at Sway, totaling 12 airfields across the region.