RAE Bedford 1987 to 1991 (PART 1-Based)

[michael]

I thought I would use our site to post my logs from my Posting to RAE Bedford and some of my  day to day stories while there. I dont think BARG did many logs if any from here mainly as we were not the busiest of airfields in the military sphere and a bit out the way.

I arrived here as an ATCA in August 1987 after being posted after failing my ATCO Cadetship ,well after Bedford (Thurleigh) busiest days of Blind Landing, Ski-Jump evaluation and many other projects,but still had its moments.

It was a mish mash of of operating agencies at RAE units

Aircraft flown by senior (generally) RAF crews,maintained by Ministryof Defence engineers and controlled and supported by NATS ATCO and ATCA's

In the tower the ATCO obviously controlled all aircraft movements and ATCA (Assistants) instructed the vechicle movements on the airfield as well as airfield inspections during the day.

We had 2 squadrons RAE (RTF "NUGGET") and RRS( RTF "BLACKBOX")

24/8/87

My first day was a ramp and hanger tour of the RAE ( ## = Rasperry Ripple c/s)

XX105  BAC 1-11         RAE                (this was first aircraft in the world to have an Electronic Colour Glass cockpit ,on the captains side)

ZE433  BAC 1-11         RAE    ##       (Tornado nose)

XH567 Canberra          RAE    ##

XW930 HS125-1B        RAE    ##

XW750 HS748             RAE    ##

ZD559  LYNX               RAE

XW241 PUMA               RAE   ##

ZB506  SEA KING        RAE   ##     (Blue Kestrel radar on nose later used on Merlin)

ZA326  TORNADO        RAE   ##

XT575  VISCOUNT       RAE    ##

XT661  VISCOUNT       RAE    ##

XR503  WESSEX          RAE    ##

XW986  BUCCANEER    RAE    ##  (Boscombe Down based)

XV344   BUCCANEER    RAE    ##  (Farnborough based)

XW175  HARRIER T4    RAE

XX897   BUCCANEER    RAE           (Tornado Nose radar)

Dump

XK530  BUCCANEER     Royal Navy

TG568  HASTINGS       RAF

Withdrawn on Airfield

XW626  COMET          RAE             (Nimrod AEW testbed)

Visitors

ZB626/L    GAZELLE   RAF

XZ932/S    GAZELLE   RAF

ZF521       PA-31        RAE  ##

26/8/97

RRS HANGER/RAMP

XH568      CANBERRA   RAE   ##

WJ992      CANBERRA   RAE   ##

WH953     CANBERRA   RAE   ##

WT327     CANBERRA   RAE    ##

WK163     CANBERRA   RAE    ##

Visitors

WK800     Meteor         RAE  (Llanbedr based)

ZF522      PA-31          RAE  ##

The RAE PA-31 Navajo's ZF520/521/522 were based at Farnborough ,while Boscombe Down used ZF622 but this was a civil Brown c/s.

These were used to fly the twice daily "Ferry" flight to Farnborough,they also flew from Farnborough to other RAE sites round the country like RAF Llanbedr and RAF West Freugh.

Some of you may have photos of ZF520/521/522 and may notice that when they were first delivered they had an all red tail (check Flickr),but later 521 gained a white stripe and 522 gained 2 stripes.

The reason for this is the military tended only to refuel the aircraft for the trip they were doing plus the return,on one occasion the crew going to West Freugh took... you guessed it one of the planes due to do a shorter trip and did not have the correct fuel on board causing them to divert.

So the RAE's solution to his mistake was to have stripes to the tails to avoid crews taking the wrong plane in future.

The joke in ATC was did RAE think British Airways had the one stripe on G-AWNA and every other one had an extra diagonal stripe !!!!

[rh226]

RRS = Radar Research Squadron.

It started its days as the Special Duty Flight at RAF St. Athan, before being renamed the Telecommunications Flying Unit (TFU) at Hurn in 1941 and subsequently moving to RAF Defford in 1942 to be near the Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) at Malvern. It was renamed the Radar Research Flying Unit (RRFU) in 1955 and moved to RAF Pershore in 1957 as Defford was too small an airfield for V-Bomber trials.

In 1977, it transferred to RAE Bedford and was renamed the Radar Research Squadron (RRS).

It was made part of the Defence Research Agency (DRA) in 1991.

[michael]

Cheers Bob ,

I forgot to give that piece of info ...dooh

Michael

[filair]

There is a nice publication about Defford available from the
Museum there.
DEFFORD AIRFIELD 1941-57.

[keefyboy]

Hi Michael and thanks for a really interesting post.

I spent a month working at the Wind Tunnel site and Thurleigh just up the road in either 90 or 91. My log books are up in the loft so I can't pin down the precise date - but I recall the practice massed flypasts over Thurleigh almost everyday culminating with the biggie over Abingdon which I also attended - I really must raid the loft for my log books! I think it may have been the 50th anniversary of BoB and after Buck Pal they flew over Abingdon so that must make it 1990.

The wind tunnel site was awesome. Far bigger than Farnborough and one of the tunnels was captured from the Germans and reassembled in the UK after WW2 (and still used till 1992). Apart from aircraft the big 7 Formula 1 teams around Silverstone also made use of the tunnels.

Did you hear the story about the 5 mile runway? The plan was for it to start at Tinwald - where Glenn Miller took off from on his ill fated flight through Thurleigh to Little Staughton.
Regards
Keith

[rh226]

Hi Keith,

I think you mean RAF Twinwood Farm, which was South of Thurleigh.

Yes, I have also heard (from a pal who was in the RAF) about the WW2 plan for a giant runway, but I understood that it was to be only between Thurleigh and Little Staughton.  The whole area of that proposed "mega-field" was also to extend Southwards to include Twinwood Farm, but with no runway connection to there.

Cheers,

Bob

[davethediver]

I thought the runway extension was for the TSR2 (Tactical Strike and Reconaissance, Mach 2) in the 1950's. The Thurleigh road still dips below ground level and has a massive concrete centre structure which is in line with the main runway. Project cancelled before completion of course.

[blackbox5]

The runway was originally planned to be 5 miles long stretching from the current site to Little Staughton, the dip in the Thurleigh Road you mention was (I was told), for a taxi way leading to the Tunnel Site/Twinwood Farm. The 5 mile long runway was a result of the prevalent thinking in the late forties/early fifties (before accurate computer simulation) that first flight of the new generation of high performance jets would consist of a take off, followed by brief control and stability checks, then a landing straight ahead on the remaining runway length, it was not based on any particular aircraft design and certainly not the TSR2 (which first flew at Boscombe over a decade later).The rapid development of analogue computing and viable mathematical aerodynamic modeling made the 5 mile long runway requirement redundant.
Interestingly enough, a few years after serving at Bedford I had the opportunity to be in the first group of pilots to visit the Russian Flight Test Institute at Zhukovsky, there for the same reasons they actually built and still have the longest runway in Europe, 5.5km long!