IT sounds the most unlikely of invitations, but the peaceful New Forest could yet see the bizarre sight of a presidential motorcade sweeping through its leafy thoroughfares, complete with police motorcycle outriders and sharp-suited, Secret Service agents, ever vigilant behind dark glasses.

New Forest National Park officers have written to US President, Barack Obama, to find out more about his grandfather’s time at the forest’s airfields in the run up to D-Day.

Sgt Stanley Armour Dunham is believed to have served at RAF Stoney Cross and RAF Ibsley during the Second World War.

In the 1970s, Mr Dunham cared for the boy who was to become the USA’s first black president after his parents’ marriage broke up, with his wife Madelyn in exotic Honolulu, Hawaii.

Young Barack Obama lived with his maternal grandparents from the age of 10 until he finished high school.

John Levesley of Friends of New Forest Airfields said the group was approached by the National Park Authority and Forestry Commission to assist with information for an educational project.

“There’s no doubt he served at Stoney Cross and there’s every chance he was at Ibsley,” he said.

“It would be fantastic if the President could be invited to come down to the New Forest to see where his grandfather served and see the memorial at Holmsley too.

“If he’s making an official visit to the UK, I’m sure it wouldn’t be out of the question.”

Back in January 1942, at the age of 23 – and following the Japanese air attacks on the US Navy base at Pearl Harbour – Stanley Dunham signed up as a private in the US Army at Ford Leavenworth, Kansas, and served with the 1830th Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Company, Aviation. By then he had been married to Madelyn for almost two years.

Six weeks before D-Day in June 1944 he and the rest of his unit came to England to help support the US 9th Air Force which was initially based at Stoney Cross near Fritham.

It then seems likely he moved to RAF Ibsley with the 9th Air Force before moving to France six weeks after the invasion of Normandy.

Vera Smith, secretary of RAF Ibsley Historical Group, welcomed the possibility that the man known as “Gramps” to the US President could have served in the New Forest.

The New Forest National Park Authority is working with the Forestry Commission to produce an interpretation panel at Stoney Cross about how it was used as an airfield during the Second World War.”