USAF Alconbury – Airfield Site

Alconbury Airfield was originally built in WW2 as an RAF bomber base, the USAF took over in 1942 and In 1995 the Airfield was handed back they do continue to operate from the rest of the site. I’m not going to bother regurgitating the history of Alconbury as it is well documented online already.

In the mid 2000s I worked on the airfield for a company based in Hangar 15 and was I very lucky to visit most of the empty airfield buildings.

Unfortunately I lost most of my photos when a HDD failed on me in 2008 (incidentally this is the reason I love my NAS drive) so many have been lost forever. The few that remain I have posted below, however some are incredibly low resolution.

I will do a separate post for Magic Mountain, Dragon Mountain, Building 210, Hardened Avionics Building/bunker (or whatever you wish to call it) which I originally visited in 2006, the only photos I have are from a visit in 2023.

Some General photo’s of the tech site, airfield and buildings 2005-2007:

Hardened aircraft shelter (HAS) 3001, The standard HAS on Alconbury are identical to those on all US airfields of the era, There are also some wider HAS built specifically for the TR-1 Spy planes below are a few photos from a standard HAS, building 3001:

On October the 16th 2007 Hanger 4001 which was occupied by Excel logistics at the time Burned to the ground.

Rex Keegan emailed me this at the time “4001 was the first TR-1 Shelter, (called Weather Shelters), constructed and delivered. Prior to these 5 shelters, all TR-1 work was accomplished in Hangar 15 or in part on Hangar 94. These shelters were built to launch aircraft from and had a small back door for the tow vehicle to drive through when towing the aircraft inside, (the TR was towed backwards) and also for the exhaust to pass through when the engine was running. The same concept was used in the hardened shelters for launch. The front door was a bi-forcated overhead contraption with three huge hydraulic pistons. (a maintenance nightmare) The 4 shelters shown were built on the West side of the Old North Runway, near runway side. The 5th shelter was built on the East side of the Old North runway overtop of the old burn pit/dump. 4005 was used as a fuel repair and corrosion control facility, and had an AFFF fire defense system.
The four shelters were never used for real world missions. Only training missions were ever flown from them, because Hangar 15 had all the equipment and power necessary for preparing a TR-1 for a particular mission. These continued to be generated and launched from that area until the hardened shelters were able to be utilized.
In spite of a lack of facilities and a shortage of equipment, the TR-1 missions flown during their time at Alconbury were deemed highly effective and so technically well advanced over that of our adversaries that their success greatly contributed to ending the cold war.”