When we first covered Time Machine Designs’ RAF Kenley 1940 project back in July last year, it was early days. The team had just announced the project on the MSFS forums and shared some work-in-progress shots.
Now, nearly ten months later, the scenery is in its final stretch, and founder Richard Blows has reached out with a progress update and a release target: the end of June.
The project recreates RAF Kenley as it appeared on the morning of 18th August 1940, the hours before the Luftwaffe raid that caused extensive damage to the station. That date, the “Hardest Day,” saw both sides suffer their highest single-day losses of the Battle of Britain. Time Machine Designs is capturing the last quiet morning before it happened.
Historical details
This project has been built with a level of care that’s hard to overstate. The team worked from an original hand-drawn airfield plan from December 1939, found in a Kenley squadron Operations Record Book, alongside 1946 Air Ministry plans, original building drawings from the RAF Museum, archive photographs, and period films actually shot at Kenley: “Reach for the Sky” (1955) and “Angels One Five” (1952). Hammond Innes’ wartime memoir “Attack Alarm,” written by someone actually stationed at Kenley during the Battle of Britain, also served as a source.
The result, according to the devs, is over 100 custom structures and vehicles, from the Officers’ Mess (modelled under camouflage netting) to the Belfast hangars, barrack blocks, the guardhouse and main gate, a dispersal telephone, a Bofors 40mm light anti-aircraft gun, Type 22 pillboxes, and even a sewer pipe repurposed as an anti-aircraft post, because that was, apparently, a real thing at Kenley.
The team is also modelling the Parachute and Cable anti-aircraft system, a wartime emergency measure where rockets trailed cables to snare low-flying aircraft, which they’ve been working to place accurately based on Alfred Price’s “The Hardest Day.”
Over 800 trees have been hand-placed using September 1940 aerial photographs, and the ground has been retextured with the distinctive creosote and engine oil camouflage pattern applied to Kenley’s grass and runways.
Static aircraft are another highlight. Models of 64 Squadron’s Spitfires and 615 Squadron’s Hurricanes carry unique squadron codes and serial numbers for aircraft known to have been at Kenley on August 17th, positioned in their correct areas. Three Miles Magister hack aircraft, later destroyed in the raid, are also included.
The vehicle roster covers an Albion three-point refueller, Austin K2 and Albion ambulances in multiple colour schemes, a David Brown airfield tractor, and an MG TB sports car. That last one has a story too: one of Kenley’s hangars was used to store officers’ private cars at their own risk. It was one of the three hangars destroyed on August 18th.
The team also confirmed that all default scenery objects within the EGKN perimeter have been replaced. There is, the developer says, nothing default left.
Kenley Revival’s input
As we noted in our coverage of their Iron Age Hillforts release, Time Machine Designs consistently works with heritage organisations. For Kenley, that means a formal partnership with the Kenley Revival conservation group, who shared unpublished archive material and advised on design decisions throughout development.
Release plans
The add-on will be available as a direct purchase from the Time Machine Designs website and will also be submitted to the MSFS Marketplace, as was Hadrian’s Wall 180AD.
