Control Tower

Control Tower at Thorpe Abbotts Airfield

A control tower of standard 1941 design for bomber satellite and Operation Training Unit satellite airfields, designed by J Hawbest. The building is constructed of cement-rendered brick with a roof of hollow reinforced pre-cast concrete slabs and steel frame windows. It follows Air Ministry Directorate of Works and Buildings drawings nos. 13726/41 and 15683/41.

The rectangular building rises to two storeys, extended upwards by the addition of a Seco control room (a prefabricated building system consisting of hollow plywood beams and columns) to Air Ministry Directorate of Works and Buildings drawing 5966/3. At first floor level is a balcony with steel railings and a flight of steel stairs providing access to the roof, which is also surrounded by steel railings. The original steel window frames survive, including four eight-pane windows to the front elevation. External steel door frames are original, though the doors themselves are replacements.

The interior plan remains largely intact. The ground floor originally contained meteorological offices, toilets, a rest room, switch room and watch office, while the first floor housed a store, signals office, controllers' rest room and control room.

Thorpe Abbotts airfield was constructed during 1942 and 1943 as a Second World War satellite airfield to Horham. Originally intended for RAF operational use, it was handed over to the USAF. Between June 1943 and September 1945 it served as home to the "Bloody Hundredth" Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force, whose operations included the first daylight raid on Berlin and the bombing of Rujkun, Norway, which delayed German heavy water manufacture for the atomic bomb programme. At the end of the war it returned to RAF care and maintenance until closure and sale in 1956. The control tower now houses the 100th Bomb Group Memorial Museum.

Control towers are the most distinctive and instantly recognisable buildings associated with military airfields, particularly in the Second World War, serving as operational nerve centres and memorials to Allied losses in the Strategic Bomber Offensive. This example is particularly well preserved, retaining much original fabric and a largely unaltered interior layout.