Pendine: The facts | This is South Wales

Pendine: The facts | This is South Wales: "THERE's more to Pendine than its history of daredevils taking to the sands.

Pendine beach itself has seven miles of sands, and was used as a landing strip for refuelling military aircraft crossing the Atlantic from America in World War Two.

Pioneer airwoman Amy Johnson, with her husband Jim Mollison, flew in a de Havilland plane non-stop from Pendine Sands to the USA in 1933.

During the Second World War the Ministry of Defence acquired Pendine Sands and used it as a firing range. The eastern part of the beach is still used, and public access is sometimes restricted.

Pendine played an important role in the Second World War. In 1940, a Ministry of Defence research base was moved from invasion-threatened southern England to Pendine, and the nearby Morfa Bychan beach was used for rehearsals for the D-Day landings."

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