Edwin Starr was wrong. He sang “War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!” back in the early 1970s, covering a song that had previously been released by (of all people) The Temptations. The song has since been recycled by Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Bruce Springsteen.
But they were all wrong. War is good for technology and, therefore, by inference, it is good for motor racing. If you wander back through the history of the sport, there are many examples of how war helped motorsport develop.
Take World War I for example. Aero-engine development done during the war provided post-war racers with impressively powerful motors, not to mention a generation of thrill-seeking adventurers who searched to rekindle the adrenaline that combat had given them. World War II was the same. Academic studies into the British motorsport industry have concluded that there were two key elements that explain why Britain now leads the world in motorsport technology: access to bright motivated engineers, and access to places to compete. The war was the reason that these assets exist.
A generation of young men had grown up devising and using weapons, planes and vehicles. Money was thrown at them in the battle with Nazi Germany, and when it was all over, they quickly became bored with what one might call “real life”. They wanted to be thrilled and, because of high import duties, imposed to try to kick-start the British car industry, they looked at the cars available and tweaked them. Austins and Morrises were turned into racing machines. The Cooper firm started out with an old Fiat Topolino. These creations were taken out and raced at meetings put on by the 750 Motor Club and other similar organisations. From this, the industry grew. The competition was fierce. If you couldn’t win with your own machinery, you bought the fastest car available and so commercial opportunities created companies like Lola and Lotus. It was truly a case of the survival of the fittest.
But the other key element required for this was to have racing circuits. Before the war, Britain was held back because the law forbade competition on public roads. The French, Germans and Italians could race wherever they liked, but the British had laws that meant racing was only possible on private land, and that meant Brooklands or Donington Park. The war changed that. Between 1939 and 1945 Britain built literally hundreds of air bases. The Ministry of War requisitioned large tracts of land and contractors such as McAlpine, Laing and Wimpey made fortunes. In the six years of war, 444 bases were built, with a new facility opening every three days at the height of the construction in 1942. These were operational bomber bases, used by RAF Bomber Command and the US 8th Air Force, plus Fighter Command and Coastal Command bases and others used just for training and maintenance. They were constructed rapidly, using the same design of runways and buildings. The runways were usually of an A-frame layout with three runways crossing one another and wide taxiways linking them to dispersal areas and hangars. It is reckoned that by 1945 there were a total of 9,000 miles of concrete runway in the British countryside – and the majority of it was suddenly no longer required.
Some airfields became airports, others were turned into show grounds or industrial parks, but most returned to agricultural use, the runways left as they were, with crops growing around them, or sheep grazing where once the machines of war had sat.
But dozens of these facilities were spotted by racing enthusiasts and, because they were private land, they were perfect for racing. Some were quickly abandoned, but others became fullblown race tracks. The list is long and glorious, from Gransden Lodge to Silverstone, Castle Combe, Thruxton, Snetterton, Goodwood, Croft, Rufforth, Davidstow and many more.
War? What is it good for? Hmmm…
joeblogsf1 
What you write is asolutely right.There was never a major technological boost in Europe than during or after a war.
I do recall that parts of the Silverstone infield were still growinig wheat in the 1970s. Not very Tilke for sure! Kind of reminds me of what an irrascible American golfer (Dave Hill?) said after seeing the St Andrews course for the first time “all this place needs is a few acres of corn and some cows”!
I don’t remember the year, but there was some splendid aerial footage of Sir Sir Jackie Stewart overdoing it in a dice with Ronnie Peterson’s Lotus and putting the Tyrrell to work as a combine harvester. Nowadays we have to be content with BTCC drivers going straight on out the back at Croft and burying the car so deep in the head-high crop in the neighbouring field that they have to have to be rescued by machete-wielding marshals.
1973. The footage, if I remember correctly, was accompanied by Raymond Baxter commenting, “Jackie’s gone agricultural!”
I believe it was “and now hes really in the agricultural business”. Either way, good video. Before my time, but Peterson clearly took no BS.
Thanks to the wonders of ancestry.com I was able to discover I am a distant relative of Ronnie. My grandmothers maiden name was Peterson, with her family migrating from Sweden to New Zealand in 1919.
You may well be right, I haven’t seen it in years. No racing car ever looked slow when Super Swede was at the wheel!
And look who has joined The (UK) Defence Innovation Advisory Panel – Ron Dennis. Motor sport helping war develop, or hopefully preventing it?
I grew up in Norfolk in the 1950s’60s., which during WW2 had been one great big glorious aircraft carrier. My local airfield of Matlaske reverted to agriculture but at least some of the runways remained (may even still be there) & were put to good use by local learner drivers, including myself. On a sunny Sunday afternoon it was probably a more dangerous place to be than the local roads!
My first job was at Lotus, not long arrived in Norfolk, and the Hethel factory was built on a former USAAF base. Much of the tarmac was put to good use to build the test track & of course an all-important landing strip.
One of the anomalies was that there were far more of the survivors from Bomber Command, the unrewarded bravest of the brave, than from the far more lauded adrenalin fuelled fighter boys that turned to motor racing. Never managed to work that one out.
Goodwood never, even to this day, had tarmac runways, it was a satellite to its more famous neighbour Tangmere, and probably owes its existence to the Earl of March.
Many of the farmers that acquired redundant airfields did handsomely from digging up the runways etc and selling the excavate for building aggregate. Generally it more than paid for the original purchase. It’s an ill wind !
I met a “boffin” in the mid 60s at the time of the launch of the Conqueror tank and he stated that it would have been available by the of 1945 had the war continued.
Goodwood, as RAF Westhampnett, was home to, I think, five fighter squadrons and was the airfield from which Douglas Bader departed on his final flight. After the war, distinguished pilot and subsequent racing driver Tony Gaze (three WC starts and a DNQ in 1952) gave the Duke of Richmond the idea of turning the perimeter roads of the airfield, which was on his estate, into a motor circuit and it went on to host quite a number of international non-championship F1 events, including the race that ended Stirling Moss’ career, before effectively closing down in the mid-1960s.
The current Duke of Richmond, then the Earl of March, reopened the circuit for historic events in 1998. These meetings usually feature Spitfires, Hurricanes and other warbirds flying from the grass runways.
Coincidently, I was using Google Earth yesterday and discovered Darley Moor. When I looked up the history of the airfield and later race circuit, I found a list of current and former circuits. Many of which I’d never heard of. One of them Epynt, on military training grounds in south Wales is going to reopen next year for motorcycle racing.
Here’s the listing, no doubt incomplete.
Current – Aintree, Anglesey, Brands Hatch, Cadwell Park, Castle Combe, Croft, Darley Moor, Donington Park, Epynt, Goodwood, Knockhill, Llandow, Lydden, Mallory Park, Oliver’s Mount, Oulton Park, Pembrey, Rockingham, Silverstone, Snetterton & Thruxton.
Former – Battersea Park, Birmingham, Blandford, Boreham, Brooklands, Brough, Catterick, Charterhall, Crystal Palace, Davidstow, Debden, Elvington, Fersfield, Full Sutton, Gamston, Gransden, Lodge, Ibsley, Ingliston, Linton-on-Ouse, Longridge, Lulsgate, Ouston, Rufforth, Thornaby & Whitchurch.
Jonno
Ibsley, just north of Ringwood, Hampshire, was certainly a former WWII airfield. I’ve read that the perimeter was used as a racetrack for a few short years in the 1950s. It was later dug up for gravel extraction, and is now a series of fishing lakes. Driving around the area I’ve never noticed anything that speaks of its time as a race circuit, but have read that the windowless concrete structure that was the air control tower still stands.
Your list omits Carnaby, near Bridlington, a former airfield that was used for motorcycle racing in the 1970s and 80s.
Kirkistown and Nutts Corner in Northern Ireland are both still in use. (Nutts Corner is no longer used by cars but hosts bikes, carts and sprints).
You could also include Jurby on the Isle of Man. A former airfield (and still an emergency stand-by for Ronaldsway), now used for motor-sports events, though nothing to the level of Silverstone, Snetterton, or Oulton Park.
“War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothin’!”
Well, yes – it did accelerate technology, but was advance in airplane technology worth the “lost generation” after WWI?
Anyways you’re spot on. I remember Denis Jenkinson writing that for a country to be a leader in motorsport first you need the circuits. With that came the drivers and that was followed by constructers building race cars. Which is certainly the case in England.
Love these sidebars – especially you’re road trips.
Silverstone is (or was) obvious but I was surprised by Castle Combe and Snetterton (having spectated one and driven the other). But, there’s a well done web site – racing circuits – that explains it: use was made of perimeter roads to form the circuit.
One of those construction constructors you mention here, Kenneth McAlpine, became racing driver himself and the primary force behind Connaught Engineering. I believe that today he is the oldest living World Championship driver.
contractors…
I was a student at the University of Nottingham in 1974-75, and have many happy memories of the University’s Sports Car Club events at RAF Saltby, driving my Mark III Triumph Spitfire.
If asked to guess how many air bases, I would have thought between 30 and 40.
444 is an incredible number. I think that it about the number of local authorities in the UK. (Just checked 418 according to Google).
Were these all air bases? I can’t imagine a runway at Outon Park for example, but I think the area may have been a parachute training areas like Tatton Park, near Ringway (Manchester Airport now)
Oulton Park was a supply depot…runways.
No runways!
I have no doubt that Joe’s numbers are absolutely correct. Firstly because of his scholarship, secondly because they quite literally littered the countryside, most particularly in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. Surprised by Brands though, would have thought it much too hilly and think the same applies to Cadwell.
Brands Hatch was never an air base
Neither I think was Mallory Park
I do remember Concorde doing a very low level fly past, well more fly over and dipped into Cooper Straight before powering away. I think it was 1982, I can still feel to power and hear the noise, fabulous but would never be allowed in these H&S managed times
If a track has undulation then it’s probably never been an airfield: Brands, Donny, Cadwell, Oulton, Mallory, Knockhill.
The tracks above are much better than the ‘airfield tracks’. Even though the airfield tracks are faster, the small hilly ones are better to drive, and better for spectators, and have tons more character.
So I, Al Bryn, am the sole lone voice of reason here?
Imagine the amazing tech advances those German scientists could have brought to fruition by collaborating with their British counterparts. Instead they all devised ways of blowing each other up. Obscene. Spin offs in some forms of tech do not justify the obscenity of war.
It is probably one of those things that, when you are separated by the events of those conflicts by so many decades, the shock of what happened no longer has the same impact – especially when, being on the winning side, you tend to get the more heroic narrative.
They didn’t do too badly teaming up with American and Russian scientists to spark the ‘space race’
“Gather round while I sing you of Werner von Braun,
A man whose allegiance was ruled by expedience…”
To what lengths would you go to avoid subjugation by jackboot ?
Lets hope the new owners of F1 can think of a better way to stimulate technical innovation, develop new circuits and train young drivers !
They are American……
As was 8th Air Force and its Bombardment Groups.
Joe, does this narrative also account for the fact that after the end of WWII most of the F1 teams have set up their headquarters in England (i.e. all those engineers and technicians from those airfields that are suddenly available)?
Yes. It is a classic cluster effect. The raw material in this case being talent and experience.
Who else on Earth would wake up at 6 to get our breakfast ready at 7 on Sunday morning?!!! My hat off to Joe for his social WORK!!! That’s that You call Charity!!!
I am up at six every Sunday, no matter what.
Hi Joe
I understand your view in that the technology is spawned out of war and some good comes out of that. But sorry to be the person that says all of that war and technology comes at a cost of ruined lives and dead and crippled people. Not to mention the few people that get very rich out of others suffering.
I have been to the Lochnagar crater in France and marvelled at the ingenuity and the time it took to dig the tunnel in its ultimate aim to main and kill. But did it actually change anything?
I have also been all over France at WWI and WW2 memorials, battle sites and museums and marvelled at the advances in the way scientist thought up better ways to kill people.
Let’s not forget the Nazis and their technology advances to try and wipe out a whole human race.
WWI stats I read 90% of the casualties were soldiers and 10 % civilian.
Americans last invasion of Iraq 10% of casualties were soldiers and 90% civilian.
Having been through Asia and seen the death railway.
Sandakan and the death marches.
Singapore and Changi prison museum.
The folly of Vietnam when American knew in 1964 that their war was unwinnable yet still carried on until 1975 to save face. Killing Hundreds of thousands. What an advance that was!
Blair and Bush liars and war criminals that sent hundreds / thousands to their death in Iraq, knowing that their premise was built on lies. (Chilcot Inquiry) So much for them being Christians and church goers. They are just rich mass murders.
The war on terror has been made up to justify the spending of massive amounts of money on military spending as they have no more enemies to justify spending that amount of money.
If that money on military had been spent on better funding for people then it would have brought on major changes. Instead of building base why not build houses for the people that you expect to go to their deaths for their country.
If only in WWI when the armistice happened on xmas day and the soldiers all meet in the middle and realised that they were all the same as each other and they did not want to fight and die here and if they had thrown down their weapons and left. What a beautiful world we would have now. No more wars.
But like everything else the rich the powerful and the generals sitting 50 miles behind the front line did not want that. War is only good for liars, thieves, politicians building a career and trying to line their own pockets.
To get a few race tracks out of war is not good.
I challenge any person to go to Changi Prison Chapel, Menin Gate, Thiepval, My Lai Massacre Site or any Commonwealth War Grave and think war is good.
I think you be taking this post a little bit too seriously.
yer right Joe.
Just back from the Canberra War Memorial Museum
and been reading a book about bomber command and just touched a nerve.
Apology.
I thought these sort of posts were only on websites where people were seeking “likes”?
Don’t believe anyone is advocating or even justifying wars for the technological advances that they have brought. I think these are reflections on some of the results that have brought certain benefits.
Well spotted…
There were some built in the States also; I raced FF in the 80’s at Deer Park, north of Spokane, Washington, on the old bomber training field that had been converted to a race track. The great thing about the track was that no matter what you did, it was almost impossible to run out of concrete. Just go faster and faster until you spun; no consequence. Sort of like F1 tracks today……..
My mother lived in a village called Seaton Ross, in East Yorkshire, and her fathers farm was next to RAF Melbourne. She used to tell tales of watching bombers taking off and landing – Halifax’s I believe. Access to the airfield was right past her front door; and the pub, known as The Bombers, was opposite, so as a young girl she used to see many airmen, and the family became life long friends with several of them.
I remember, as a young boy in the 70’s, wandering up to the remains of the airfield with my cousin, and wandering into the old nissen huts. It might just be the mists of time that have played with my mind, but I’m sure I can remember them still having bunks, cupboards full of papers and all sorts of other paraphernalia in them.
It’s used for drag racing, and as a rally school now, I believe.
Re the song, not to forget Jackie Chan who has a double connection, with him now “runnning” well having his name on at least, a WEC team.
Stick a pin in the map in Linocnshire or Norfolk and you will be within 10 milse of an airfield (or formsr one) in any direction (unless you are on the coast of course)
Was Ingleston mentioned? I remember a BTCC there on a very twisty track that threaded netween two buildings in a double bend chicane.
1982 and even 1983 did not yield a similar push in favour of the UK teams and drivers… maybe you Brits need longer wars to obtain a positive impact? 🙂
OK, I did read this article cum grano salis, and I understand the historian’s analysis of the outcome using the facts at hand, about the influence of war over the technology and context with which motor sports evolved from the fifties. You guys got grey air bases, but we got white Alfa Romeo kitchen stoves, ha!.
Unfortunately war is a serious matter (still a daily one for some of us), and maybe motor sports are what they are today thanks to the technological push of the war effort, but not many lessons have been learnt, to avoid cycles repeating over and over. That post-war situation may be the last one where this positive conclusion could have been taken.
Little analysis is made about what motor sport (and many other things) would be like today in the absence of certain conflicts in various places. Would we really have not had all the talent cropping up in the 40ies and 50ies without the 2nd World War? Of course we don’t know, because we don’t have historical facts, just the capacity of imagination and speculation. There’s no doubt that necessity is the mother of invention, but talent grows from passion and gifted minds, *in a rewarding environment*. Otherwise Africa would be the first world technological power.
Motor sports grew at that specific moment thanks to the very specific conditions and timing in mankind’s technological evolution. Unfortunately history shows that usually war takes the region and the conflicting factions into a regression rather than in a progression due to the devastation of the national resources, (including talent). It works both ways. In the case of Britain, it worked out “positively”, also thanks to the resources brought in by its colonies.
Sorry it all came out as a rainy day bummer… to be positive, maybe there’s still hope for an Alfa Romeo Sauber kitchen stove in the near future.
Peace.
Did you read the article? Did you not notice the wording was carefully chosen? The song says war is good for “Absolutely nothin’!” and that is why they are wrong. Of course no one advocates war as being a good thing, but it does have things which are not negative. Your screed is all very worthy and self-righteous, but read what was written…
I did, Joe, and that’s why I wrote “with a grain of salt”. I also know why that song became popular at a certain moment of US history. I’m sorry I came out pedantic, but I’m not typing in my own language. My intervention does not put in doubt the indisputable facts you relate. My point was only about the peculiarity of that period as to its effect on technology, and that it probably won’t happen after another large-scale conflict (which will take us back to the caves). My country went to war waving Marinetti’s manifesto, whereby War is the only hygiene of the world, so yes, sorry if I got a bit itchy about it. My apologies, and thanks again for putting our passion in its historical context, it’s a valuable rarity nowadays.