Control Tower (Building 340), Upper Heyford Airbase

Control Tower (Building 340), Upper Heyford Airbase

This is a military airfield control tower built in 1950–2 for the United States Air Force's Strategic Air Command, when the former RAF base was extensively remodelled. It is listed for its historic importance as a key Cold War defence site.

The building is constructed around a steel frame. Its central element is a red brick two-storey tower measuring 33 feet 6 inches by 32 feet 6 inches, topped with an octagonal steel-framed glazed visual control room providing 360-degree views of the entire aerodrome, with the main runway to the north. On the flat roof, which has metal railings around its perimeter, are mounted two aerials and a small observation penthouse at the north-west corner, possibly used for signalling. Single-storey flat-roofed wings flank the tower to the east, west and south, housing electrical equipment and offices. The east and west wings each measure 25 feet by 23 feet and also have railings around their edges. The tower features small, square-paned Crittall-type metal windows. A projecting oriel-like booth, probably added later, sits at the central first-floor window on the north side.

Internally, the main entrance is at the rear of the right-hand wing, opening into a corridor running the full width of the building. The right-hand wing contains two front rooms: one originally housed GPO equipment, the other served as the monitor room. A rest room and female lavatory occupied the wing's rear. The front half of the main tower held the radio equipment room, with an officers' lavatory, signals workshop and staircase positioned to the rear. The left wing contained ancillary rooms including the main medium voltage switchgear room, accessed via external doors. The small south wing housed a ventilating plant room and pyro store.

Concrete stairs with a metal handrail ascend to the first floor. The radar control room occupied the majority of this level. Double doors provided access onto the flat roofs of the east and west wings. Other first-floor rooms included a rest room and the SATCO's office. A steep steel ladder in a rear stairwell leads up to the visual control room, which is equipped with pull-down purple-tinted sun screens and sound-proof tiles on the walls and ceiling. One ground-floor door bears a hand-painted shield recording occupation by the Air Weather Service, probably near the end of the station's operational life. Much of the tower's original telephone and equipment has been removed, though some switchgear and housings remain.

Prefabricated 2-metre-tall sand-filled blast walls protect the building's front and west sides. A fuel tank between the tower and a gravelled square is similarly protected, though the tank itself has no historic interest.

Ten metres north of the blast wall lies a gravelled square approximately 20 metres across, defined by concrete kerbs and concrete posts that formerly supported a wire fence. At its centre stands a 1.5-metre-high bollard-like metal housing containing a magnetometer—an instrument that detected radar signals from the east, now removed.

Upper Heyford was established as a Royal Flying Corps station in 1915. During the 1920s it became one of the RAF's bomber stations under the Home Defence Expansion Scheme. In World War II it served as a training station for Bomber Command. In the early 1950s the base passed to the USAF's Strategic Air Command, one of four such inland bases chosen for their distance from England's vulnerable east coast. Extensive remodelling followed, including new runways, bomb stores, the control tower and four Nose Docking Sheds for aircraft maintenance. Between 1953 and 1965, B-47 SAC Stratojets operated from here. The base then passed to USAF Europe and for the remainder of the 1960s housed mainly reconnaissance aircraft including U-2s, RF-101 Voodoos and later Phantoms. In 1970 the F-111 bomber arrived—a new generation advanced aircraft whose all-weather capability and technical sophistication made it a key component of NATO's nuclear deterrent during the 1970s and the sole carrier of the USA's intermediate-range nuclear deterrent in Europe. Upper Heyford remained the only F-111 Wing in Europe until F-111s were assigned to RAF Lakenheath in 1977. After 1984, when Cruise Missiles were introduced, the F-111s' role shifted to locating Warsaw Pact mobile SS-20 missiles. In 1986, F-111s from Upper Heyford and Lakenheath conducted a retaliatory strike on Libya that attracted worldwide attention. In 1990, Upper Heyford's F-111s participated in Operation Desert Shield following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and in Operation Desert Storm to liberate it. Following the Cold War's end and the F-111's obsolescence, the aircraft was withdrawn in 1993. Upper Heyford was then returned to the RAF, which declared it surplus to military requirements.

The control tower is one of seven built around 1950–3 to drawing 5223a/51. Four were constructed at the Very Heavy Bomber bases of Upper Heyford, Brize Norton, Fairford and Greenham Common; one at Mildenhall tanker aircraft base; and two at the upgraded fighter stations of Biggin Hill and North Weald. Upper Heyford's tower stands centrally within the south half of the flying field, positioned south of and overlooking the main runway. It served as the weather and radio receiver station for the airbase and was central to its operation.

The control tower is listed primarily for its historic significance as a structure erected during the Cold War, when such buildings provided some of the most potent physical manifestations of the global division between capitalism and communism that shaped the second half of the twentieth century. Upper Heyford itself was among England's key Cold War defence sites during the 1970s and 1980s when USAF F-111s based here provided part of NATO's European intermediate-range nuclear deterrent. The control tower was essential to the base's operations and remains an integral part of the complex. The listing also includes its blast walls and the magnetometer with its surrounding square to the north.