As to how I came to be referencing "Precast Concrete Raft Units" by J W Bull, well that's another story. But I thought this section might be of interest:
1.2.1 Airfield construction
Unreinforced precast concrete hexagons were used for the first concrete
airfields in the Soviet Union in 1931-32. These hexagons were 1.25 m long and
100-140 mm thick. Larger hexagons 1.5 m long and 140-220 mm thick were
later introduced for heavier aircraft. Problems with rocking and spalling of
these early hexagonal units led to their general replacement with conventional
cast-in-place reinforced concrete[8].
The first airfield use of prestressed concrete pavement occurred at Orly in
Paris and used precast slabs that were triangular with side lengths of 1 m and a
thickness or 160 mm [9,10];. Later a 61 m square section of airport pavement
was constructed at Finningley, UK, of 9.1 m by 2.7 m, 150 mm thick precast pre-
stressed slabs [9]. Also a taxiway at Melsbroek was constructed of 1.25m by
12 m, 75 mm thick precast prestressed slabs [11]. These slabs were pretensioned
and cast as parallelograms. After placement the slabs were post-tensioned with
transverse cables to obtain interaction between slabs and to increase their
structural capacity.
Six experimental precast prestressed slabs 2.3 m by 10m and 200mm thick were
constructed for DC-8 aircraft in Japan [12]. In the Soviet Union precast,
prestressed slabs have been acceptable for airfields subject to twin tandem gears
of 55 000 kg and single gear loads of 30000kg [8]. Their use is particularly
beneficial when dealing with non-uniform swelling or settlement, construction
during freezing temperatures, awkward project geometry that limits the use of
conventional paving equipment, requirements for rapid construction, and
strengthening existing pavements
Unfortunately the Google Books preview doesn't show the footnotes. However the taxiway at Melsbroek in Belgium might have been that which joined the new airport to the old site at Evere / Haren, it was about 2km long!
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