The Focke-Achgelis 223 Dragon, the first helicopter to cross the English Channel, flew 83 tests in 1944 to gauge its potential for carrying cargo across mountains. Igor Sikorsky had manufactured 131 of his two-person R-4 helicopters, and by September 1945, a handful of the machines had made it to the AFEE for evaluation. The GPS on my phone tells me that I am standing where the runway should be, but all I can see at my feet is a thin covering of bracken and a layer of mud mixed with what looks like gravel but may be the rubble of blitzed cities like nearby Southampton.įurther on, I find a large expanse of concrete where the hangar for B Flight and their primitive helicopters once stood. The British Parachute Regiment was established in 1942, and the AFEE was the unit tasked with researching and testing parachutes and the aircraft that would carry the jumpers-gliders, and beginning in 1945, helicopters.įrom the air, the ghostly A-shape outline of the crisscrossing runways can still be seen, but on the ground, traces are hard to find. At first there appears to be nothing left of RAF Beaulieu and the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment (AFEE) that covered the heath in concrete. Wild ponies drink from the puddles that the heavy rain has left behind.

A cold wind cuts across the boggy heathland of the New Forest on the southern coast of England.

Modern german tanks heli