Ex Yatesbury aircraft

Wasn’t the late Radio 2 DJ Jimmy Young a PT instructor at Yatesbury ?, I am sure he once mention it in an interview.

Quote[Same reason you’d have armourers at most RAF training stations: rifle training. There was a range on the northwest side of RAF Cherhill.]End quote

Didn’t know that.

Egyptian PT: that is one of my favourites: hadn’t heard it in many a year!

🙂

As Sabrejet says. there would be a Small Arms repository for the usual stuff like the ‘Snow Drops’ pistols and personal Sporting weapons, although all we got were wood truncheons. I do remember that the Officer I/c the Motorbike club was a P.O. D’eath. He was guard commander on one occasion. It was two hours on, four off and tea made with Carnation milk and one RAF bicycle. One man for the whole of the Cherhill site and the only person I ever challenged was the boiler man whom no one had seen fit to mention was on site.

Cherhill was up a narrow country road which led to the tiny Yatesbury village. There are RFC graves in the small church yard. Wednesday afternoons was sports afternoon which for me was Egyptian PT (lying on your bed reading) or the Moonrakers Gliding club at Netheravon or Upavon.

One of the senior instructors and also a Radar instructor at Yatesbury was a Gliding Champion,John Williamson whom I believe was the son of Henry Williamson the author. (Tarka the Otter amongst others) another instructor at Moonrakers was Dick Stratton of the SR.53 test team.

John

Same reason you’d have armourers at most RAF training stations: rifle training. There was a range on the northwest side of RAF Cherhill.

John, now why would armourers be a Yatesbury?

My only memory is of the Lancaster? fuselage and banging my shin on the main spar as I climbed over it to gain access to the cockpit area. Where did that one go?
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I just noticed this . I think that your Lancaster was in fact the Lincoln (1960). I too remember the main spar and ‘shocking’ some other trainees by connecting an electrical Megger tester to a radar cable and accidentally touching the braided armoured sheathing. Made ’em jump.

John

Cherhill airfield and the hangars were just over the horizon, off right.. In Desk pilot’s picture are the wooden huts which made up Yatesbury I think I was in Z.26 at one time. Also visible are the lagged heating pipes between the billets of which half were redundant. Some armourers were rumoured to have put a brass door knob filled with cordite and fired it along a stretch of these creating chaos in the huts.

John

That aircraft was lucky to survive for so long and make it into preservation. To be strictly accurate, it’s not a Meteor, it’s an F.9/40.

I photographed the Meteor en route to BoB day RAF Colerne, so this would make it September 1959.

Mark

What a pity. Those aircraft taught so many young lads like me. Thanks for replies and memories.

For what it’s worth, ARF 298, 1971/72 I’m standing far right.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]254490[/ATTACH]

19/8/62: VW126 Shackleton Prot. scrapped on site 1963
7444M (WX866) Venom N.F.3 scrapped on site
7519M (WX843I) ditto
WX905 and DG202 as above.

July 1946, wingless Halifax
detail from https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW001929
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Tiger Force Lancasters and Halifax fuselage scrapped on site. Mosquitos burnt – at least one on Nov 5th I think.

Going back some, there are a couple of 2 Signals School Proctors extant, along with the Dominie that flies from Duxford.

My only memory is of the Lancaster? fuselage and banging my shin on the main spar as I climbed over it to gain access to the cockpit area. Where did that one go?

So did I! The only one I know for sure is the Venom NF.3 WX905 which is now at Newark Air Museum on which I did my Gee 3 exam. The prototype Meteor DG202 the former gate guardian is of course now at Cosford. It was initially refurbished in the near hangar.

The other hangar was the school and later the training hangar.

John

Cherhill hangars taken in the 90’s