Description

LAUNTON

SP5924 A 421 (SOUTH-EAST SIDE)
1714/0/10056 RAF Bicester: Technical Site
01-DEC-05 Building No 96 (Lubricant Store)

GV II
Oil storage and liquids storage. Dated 1926. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to drawing number 329/26. English bond brickwork, asbestos-cement slate roof.

PLAN: A simple rectangular building in two sections, the higher with raised floor and external loading platform, and the lower floored at normal level. Both units gabled.

EXTERIOR: The front has a plain wall with central pair of sliding steel doors to centre bay of raised platform, above which a near-flat corrugated steel canopy on 4 very thin posts. Lower, to right, pair of doors in recessed jambs formed in bull-nosed engineering bricks. Continuous roof-light to both slopes, 4 + 2 ridge vents. The left gable has an added lean-to over pair of doors, remainder of building plain walls.

INTERIOR: Steel trusses visible on interior brick piers. The main room has raised concrete floor at level of exterior platform.

HISTORY: The Technical Site at Bicester, separated from the Domestic Site, still has many of the original buildings, mostly of 1926 but with others added during successive phases of the 1930s Expansion Period. This is one of the original buildings, set close to an 'A' type hangar of the same period (Building 70, qv), and as such it comprises an externally complete example of one of the first permanent designs for Britain's independent air force. It also comprises an integral part of a uniquely important site.

Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force - and the manner in which its expansion reflected domestic political pressures as well as events on the world stage - in the period up to 1939. It was this policy of offensive deterrence that essentially dominated British air power and the RAF's existence as an independent arm of the military in the inter-war period, and continued to determine its shape and direction in the Second World War and afterwards during the Cold War. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester now forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews - once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation - to form and train as units.
For further historical details see Buildings Nos 79 and 137 (Type 'A' Hangars).

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26672228

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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