Though there were airfields in Shropshire during the First World War, at
Shawbury, Tern Hill and Monkmoor, it was in the late 1930s that a
massive building programme began to dot the county with new RAF
airfields, mostly for training purposes, until there were over sixteen -
in some cases they were so close together that their circuits
overlapped. Since the Second World War the number has fallen away, but
Shawbury, Tern Hill, Cosford and little Chetwynd are still used by the
RAF, and Sleap has been revived for general aviation. In most cases the
others have returned to agriculture and a few to industry, with derelict
control towers and other iconic buildings remaining as lost sentinels of
the days when young men trained to carry the fight into the dark skies
of Germany.