Sway
SWAY: Emergency Landing Ground (ELG)
Note: These three pictures are from my Google Earth © derived database.
Location: 1nm ESE of Sway village, about 2.5nm SSW of Brockenhurst town centre and roughly 2.5nm NW of Lymington town centre
Period of operation: Summer of 1940 to summer of 1941
Landing area: Grass with a maximum LDA/TORA of around 600 metres
Note: As the first picture shows, these landing runs were easily accessible in most directions from SE/NW to SW/NE.
NOTES: It appears that this ELG was mostly used by aircraft of the Special Duties Flight based at CHRISTCHURCH. Indeed, it seems that most of them, if not all of them, were flown over from CHRISTCHURCH to stay here overnight, in case CHRISTCHURCH was bombed. But, the Luftwaffe had identified and photographed the site, and decided to bomb it too from time to time.
This was of course during the period when the threat of an invasion by Germany was at its height, and indeed ordered by Adolph Hitler, and initial preparations were made. Until the German High Command, to put it bluntly, informed Hitler that Great Britain was an island! Not only that, it was very well defended and the British had a navy vastly superior to the German navy. So, the tactics employed in invading countries on mainland Europe could not be applied.
Photographs taken by the RAF soon showed that the invasion force build-up had ceased. This did not prevent the British government from maintaining, to the public, that the threat still existed. A ploy that served them well to create fear amongst the population for some time afterwards.
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