Bunker Mentality
Daniel Scharf of the Oxford Trust for Contemporary History describes the battle to preserve RAF Upper Heyford as a unique monument to the Cold War.
In 1989 the Berlin Wall came down, and in 1991 the Cold War ended; in 1993 the US air base at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire – the European base of nuclear-equipped B-52s, F-111s and U-2 spy-planes – was declared surplus to requirements in the new post-Cold War era. In September 1994, the last USAF plane flew out of the airbase. The 1.9 mile-long airstrip is now a car park, while the fifty-six concrete hangars – which once sheltered bombers designed to pre-empt or retaliate – are used as warehouses or lie empty.
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