Standsted AIRPORT

Stansted Airport is one of the busiest aviation hubs in Britain today; its state of the art design is a living blueprint of how a modern airport should be.     

Stansted Airport is a photographic account of the airport's birth in a sleepy Essex village as a vital USAAF base during the Second World War and its gradual transformation into the airport of today using many rare and unpublished photographs of the place and planes. Built by the USAAF in 1942, Stansted was used initially as a huge storage depot for the hundreds of aircraft transferred from America to be used in the bombing of Hitler's Germany. During 1943 Stansted enjoyed a period of outstanding glory as home to the 344th Bombardment Group of the US 9th Air Force, daily despatching B-26 bombers into Europe as the Allies attacked in preparation for the D-Day landings and beyond. 

After the war, and the departure of the military, Stansted took a slow  path to its current status with small airlines coming and going during the earlier years of commercial aviation.   

In the 1960s Stansted grew steadily as London's existing airports increasingly struggled with the demands of air traffic. A giant stride was eventually taken in 1986 when architect Sir Norman Foster designed the current terminal, which is at the cutting edge of style and practicality, and turned Stansted into a modern, thriving airport ready for continued growth into the new millennium.