Nuclear bomb store RAFGaydon and runway end stop?

Supposedly decommissioned and used to store the national Film Archives the site is hidden by mature trees the entrance is pictured , a guard hut and a building just outside the perimeter adjacent and on the North side of the entrance Road the location is SP 319544 . the last Photo is of a building close to the North face of the Lightthorne Rd i can not give a grid reference but it appeared to be in line with the end of where i thought the Runway of Gaydon might be and if not agricultural thought it might be an end stop for the runway and one blazoned in black and White diagonal Stripes .Perhaps unconnected with Gaydon but unnusual for the area the single track Lightthorne lane and the road the Bomb store is of have several Passing points of concrete not atall typical of any other Warwickshire road engineering  

My first posting out of RAF Halton in March 1959 was RAF Gaydon then 232 OCU Victors and Valiants. The 'nuclear bomb store' formal title was Supplementary Storage Area (SSA). Although an OCU Gaydon had a role in the Bomber Command nuclear attack plan and a limited number of weapons were stored here. I did not work at the SSA but made many visits.

As part of the Second Line Armament one of my tasks was bomb loading which was carried out periodically on all aircraft. Although we maintained conventional bomb capability it was never used and only a single nuclear store* would be loaded. Blue Danube a 10000 pound bomb with a fission package, Yellow Sun 2 ,Britains first droppable fusion bomb and, later, Red Beard, 
Weapons were delivered singly from the SSA in a special purpose 'Pantechnicon. towed by a 'Hippo' road tractor via a concrete back road (SP323529) up to the airfield through a gate at the western end of the main runway.
Could you elaborate on the location of the building in your Photo 2 please William?
* 'Store' was the RAF common noun used to describe air-dropped munitions.The labels on aircraft armament panels used this as did ground test equipment, .e.g Stores Selector Switch
 

When i get home i shall consult my map and try to give an approximate bearing it was between the rroad from Kineton and south of a short belt of trees not marked on the map that i took to be The end of the Test Track/runway very approx 100yards north of the road from Kineton off which the road the Bomb store entrance joins two thirds approx nearer Kineton than that junction

Thge map is ordnance survey 2.5 inches to the mile sheet SP35 published 1952 with minor revisions 1961 and hence out of crown copyright i have placed the point of the pin on approximately (very) the location of the building around SP328523 . 

Thank you William, I see it now.
As you surmise it is just off the centreline of the former main runway of RAF Gaydon.
That it hasn't been demolished suggests reinforced concrete construction. Probably an approach aid judging from the location and not WW2 related.

PETERTHEEATER wrote:

Thank you William, I see it now.
As you surmise it is just off the centreline of the former main runway of RAF Gaydon.
That it hasn't been demolished suggests reinforced concrete construction. Probably an approach aid judging from the location and not WW2 related.

Looking at googlemaps it looks to me like the building is directly on the runway centreline and could well be an approach aid of some sort.  I don't think Gaydon would have had an ILS; the RAF generally relied on ground controlled approaches in those days (early 60s) and even if it was an ILS, it would be on the other end of the runway because they would only have it on one end in accordance with the prevailing wind.  
Maybe it was a 'B' Centre for the power supply for airfield lighting?  It's too far off the end of the runway to be a localiser building.

Thanks Terry.
In 1959 through 1961 when I was there they had a PAR. I was in the tower one day checking pyros and signal mortar and had seen a Canberra making repeat approaches and overflying without landing. One of the controllers told me 'they' were calibrating the PAR and explained what it was since my 19 year old brain was only just starting to learn.

Yes,that building is of strong construction or Farmer Giles would have demolished it by now so it could be related to the airfield lighting which would have been upgraded from the austere wartime circuits to meet Cold War requirements. I wonder if the old cabling has been 'recovered, Some good quality copper to be had for scrap.

Thinking back a few months, there was a thread about the SBA istallation at Welford which of course I can't find now!  There was a vertical photo of Welford with a building on the centreline which I thnk was about the same distance from the end of the runway as was the building at Gaydon.
Now I'm not saying there was a SBA at Gaydon which I think is highly doubtful as SBA was 'binned' early in its use, however I was wondering if maybe when Gaydon was re-developed as a V bomber station in the '50s, maybe they installed a BABS system and this building could be the remnant of this system.

Found it!  Titled 'SBA at Welford questions' and it's in 'RDF/Radar sites'.
The building on the centreline at Welford looks quite substantial as does the one at Gaydon.  There is mention that in the '50s, several RAF BABS had permanent buildings rather than the more normal Hillman van and that many RAF stations had BABS as well as PAR/GCA.
The thread about SBA is on page 4; last post dated 10 Jan 2017.

PETERTHEEATER wrote:

Thanks Terry.
In 1959 through 1961 when I was there they had a PAR. I was in the tower one day checking pyros and signal mortar and had seen a Canberra making repeat approaches and overflying without landing. One of the controllers told me 'they' were calibrating the PAR and explained what it was since my 19 year old brain was only just starting to learn.

 

Vaguely recall that when I first started as an ATC assistant in '69 there was mention of using a Canberra for both civil and military flight checking for all types of radar from PAR up to long range radars because it had the ideal reflective aspect (2 sq.m was mentioned) to give a the perfect reflection when seen on radar.