Oxfordshire Aviation Archive moves to SOFO Museum
Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum is now home to the Oxfordshire Aviation Archive. The museum’s two-part account by Peter Burton and Peter Davis describes the collection they founded in 2024 by bringing together material on military and civilian flying in the county.
From airfields to flying clubs
The founders list airfield plans, photographs, station magazines and programmes alongside flying-club material and records about aircraft companies. Their account covers RAF Benson’s role in wartime photographic reconnaissance and the aircraft repair work carried out in Cowley. Some RAF and company material remains with Peter Davis while he continues adding to it.
What a station name can tell you
A place written on a family photograph or in a logbook gives you something to compare with station material from the same period. Keep a note of the date, unit and any aircraft serial written alongside it. A station photograph can help identify a hangar or explain what work took place there. A name or service number from a separate record can help establish who served there and when.
Check period maps as well as present-day place names. The archive follows the county’s 1974 boundary, so its geographical scope includes some airfields in areas that were previously part of Berkshire.
Tracing a Polish airman’s service
A British station name is a starting point when a family is tracing a Polish airman. Our Polish military research service can compare dates, unit clues and service numbers with Polish and other continental records and set out the evidence in an English-language report.