Friends of the New Forest Airfields

About Us

Friends of the New Forest Airfields was established by a group of local aviation enthusiasts, Service Veterans, authors, and historians during the 1990s. The original objective was to erect a memorial to those military and civilian personnel who had served on the twelve WW2 New Forest Airfields. The memorial is located on Black Lane, the perimeter track of the former Holmsley South airfield. Memorial services are held each year at the Airfields Memorial to recognise appropriate days of remembrance.

The secondary objective of the Friends was to develop an educational resource and support centre to help to share knowledge about the important role that the twelve airfields played in WW2, especially in support of D-Day and to preserve and make available this knowledge for future generations. This was achieved through the development of our Heritage Centre Museum, located in a former military building on what was RAF Sopley, near Bransgore. The Heritage Centre opened in 2016. The Centre contains aircraft artefacts, models and photographs, interactive displays, dioramas, individual pilot stories and limited-edition prints, many of which are signed by the pilots.