On the outskirts of Sleap airfield are a number of war-era ruins. It's not at all uncommon to find old military ruins on the outskirts of airfields. Even active bases like Shawbury have the odd abandoned pillbox or two in their vicinity, being engulfed by brambles. But this is somewhat unique, or at the very least, rare. This unassuming ruin houses an old RAF turret trainer, and it truly is a shame to see it so neglected.
Sleap Airfield operated from 1943 until 1964, but is still used by the Shropshire Aero Club today. The airfields former control tower now houses a rather pleasant café, and they seem to really care about their heritage. And that makes the turret trainer even more mystifying. Few people know that it's even here.
Not being down with military lingo, and having previously been laughed at for calling something a tank when it was actually an "armoured combat vehicle," it's safe to say that I'm probably going to annoy a lot of military nerds with my incorrect vernacular in this post. Sorry for that. Who would have guessed it would be my ignorance of military terminology that would emasculate me? My money was on my epic blow job skills, but hey-ho.
But anyway, Sleap was used to train bombers during the war. To defend that precious life-ending cargo, bombers were often escorted by fighter planes, but this wasn't 100% dependable, so larger bombers would carry their own gunners for defence. The dilemma was how to train these gunners in a way that was resource efficient, without taking any planes out of service for the sake of training.
A ground-based turret simulation was the answer! And they were built across many RAF bases with the usual uniformity one expects from the military. I managed to find an image of what turret training buildings typically looked like and it resembles this one nearly exactly.
(Image not mine, obviously)
Of course, the doors and windows are long gone, and the training screen now looks like a mixture between the chair from Joe 90 and the Meccano spider from Toy Story. But it's still pretty school!
This is just the bare bones of what was once here. The metal structure would have held a semi-circular plaster screen. In the middle would also have been a wheeled scaffolding frame with a number of platforms on it. The top platform would have held a projector, and below it the trainee would sit with their training gun.
Footage of enemy planes would be projected onto the plaster screen, and its circular shape meant that the gunner could practice rotating in the turret as enemy planes approached from different angles. The trainee also heard realistic plane engine sounds and gunfire too, to make it as immersive as possible.
I did wonder about the logistics of the gunfire. Surely they weren't firing actual bullets, but then how did the operator judge the accuracy of the trainee?
Well allegedly the gun shone a little yellow dot onto the screen. The gun sighty-thing had a yellow filter so the trainee couldn't see the yellow dot, but the operator could see it land on the projected enemy planes, and judge their accuracy. Quite clever.
I've found a diagram which shows how the whole setup would have looked.
(Image not mine, obviously)
The plaster screen is smashed all over the floor at the bottom of the frame. It's a sad sight to see, especially given how many old reports talk about it still being intact only a few decades ago.
A Shropshire Star article from 1998 mentions the plaster frame breaking "last year" and the training platform was said to still be here in the 1980s. The whole thing was said to be "in excellent condition" in 1984.
Generally its decay is attributed to the roof collapsing. Once the weather got in, it was just a rapid decline. But I cant help feeling a little salty. People did know about this structure. Its existence was recorded prior to it being damaged, and no effort was made to preserve it. That's really sad. It may well be the last of its kind, and it is part of our heritage.
The thing about most wartime ruins, like pillboxes, battle HQs, seagull trenches and the like, is they were mostly all precautionary, and while they are an excellent testimony to what the British people were prepared to face, they were ultimately ornamental in the long run.
This turret trainer is different, because it actively contributed to the war effort. No doubt there were German pilots shot down by gunners who practiced in this very training simulator. It's pretty weird to think about.
My most reliable source on the subject of turret trainers claims that they were first demonstrated in 1940 at RAF West Freugh, in Dumfries. It made a good impression, and by the end of the year, Stanhope Engineering of Cricklewood were awarded a contract to manufacture forty of them.
A slightly less reputable source claims that the first turret trainer was installed at the Royal Naval Gunnery school in Portsmouth, and its success led to 43 similar ones being built across the UK.
But I guess, regardless of where they originated, out of forty-ish of these, this is the last, or at the very least the most preserved one. From what I understand, there are other turret trainer buildings still out there, but this is the only one to still have the frame intact.
It is a shame that it's in this condition, especially since Sleap does still attract people. It has a café and a small museum of its history. This could have been an excellent attraction at the airfield.
There is another room next to the training room, which clearly had an upper floor at some point, but is now just a shell. The roof has long collapsed, and any clue about what this might have been here is now buried under a layer of dirt.
Presumably it would have been an admin area for the turret operator, or perhaps a storage area.
There's a few bits of graffiti dotted around, but nothing much. Someone has drawn a zombie Meeseeks. Kinda gives me David Firth vibes.
And there's an Illuminati eye.
No Satan, pentagrams or genitals. I'm actually surprised.
Next to the turret trainer is an old shelter, now home to trees. If an air raid had occurred during a training session, this is where the men would have sheltered.
Nearby there's a few other bits of rubble, which means other structures did stand here once.
I'm quite sad that this piece of history has been left to rot, and I'm disappointed that people did know about its decline when there was a chance to save it, and nothing was done at the time.
This is why urbex is so important. Forget about those losers on Tiktok and Youtube, with their lies and clickbait, and bragging about how they got caught by the popo for the sake of some internet clout. They don't represent urbex. Urbex is about documenting something while it's here, because tomorrow it might not be. This is part of our heritage, and part of our resistance to fascism during World War 2. It's allegedly the last of its kind. If it can't be saved, it should be documented.
That's about all I've got today.
My next blog is on the travel blog, and it's awesome. But I'll be focusing on local stuff again after, with some cool industrial stuff.
If you like my blogs and you want to see more, then following my social media *might* help keep you updated. But the algorithms are against us. I'm a blogger in a world that favours reels, brain rot content, and AI models, so admittedly I'm shooting myself in the foot by behaving like a technophobic grandpa. I'm not confident in my ability to compete with an AI model. Why read this when you can wank? But anyway, I'm on Facebook, and Instagram. I'm also on the less algorithmic shitshows, Cara, Vero and Bluesky, which are basically what Instagram and Twitter should be, if they weren't owned by greedy people. People actually see who they choose to follow there, and there's just less drama and outrage harvesting. The userbase is smaller but the vibe is healthier. Join me there maybe?
Thanks for reading!
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