Last week I was in the Cotswolds, and just had to take my cycle to the old RAF Honeybourne, now a rather ragged industrial estate. But ragged is good – it means that the bones of the former RAF base are still extant. If hangars could talk….

I had to visit it because during WW2 it was the base for the Operational Training Unit that fed many pilots into Bomber Command, and a few of them ended up in 161 Squadron, the topic of my forthcoming book. Indeed one or two served at Honeybourne as instructors. Such OTUs were also used to bulk up numbers for Bomber Harris’ famed “1000 bomber” raids, though the wisdom of sending instructors on such missions is open to question.

Must try to revisit the site by air some time.