Planes on poles. Liberty Park – RAF Lakenheath

Some of the locals bitch about it.

News to me.

I live locally and rarely hear a bad word said about our American chums.

Moggy

Here it is in the R.Neth.A.F. Museum at Soesterburg, Netherlands wearing yet another false serial. It has been there at least three years.

That F100 at Wethersfield must be the first historic aircraft I can REMEMBER seeing, as Finchingfield Primary School catered for kids from the “base” as well we used to go up their for visits and of course to see friends. I remember being impressed by the multi-coloured jetpipe. Given that I can’t have been much more than six then, it’s funny how you remember these things.

Nice to see that it’s still about, even if not that close to where I saw it. Presumably as a “gate guard” (wasn’t it quite a long way inside the fence?) it got a fair amount of TLC – certainly more than some of the other ex-French airframes I’ve seen!

Adrian

Some of the locals bitch about it. Apparently the noise of the national anthems (including our own) being played on loudspeakers that are only really audible in Lakenheath village if the wind is right, is ‘disturbing’. :rolleyes:

And F15’s are quiet? :rolleyes: I think it is a nice touch. A daily reminder of what its all about.

There is not much for the staff based at LH to do in the village, so I guess the villagers don’t benefit except for the large number of locals that are employed on base. Brandon has a little more to offer but there are folk on the base that simply never pass thrrough the gates. There’s far too much to do on base and very reasonably priced.

The thunderchief was scrapped in may 96 along with 3 phantoms and an eagle, The F-100 left in 95

Every day at 17:00, the tannoy sounds and the base comes to a standstill. Tribute is paid to fallen comrades and then life resumes.

Welcome to the world of the US Air Force. The ceremony occurs at every base daily as the flag outsoide the HQ building is lowered. Throughout the base “retreat” and the national anthem are played over the public address/warning system
Members in uniform who are outside are required to come to attention and salute, cars are expected to pull to the side of the road.
The only people allowed to keep doing their business are the people on the flightline (where you can’t hear the music anyway.)
I always thought it was a nice touch.

Only guessing but is the Thud the one that’s now a “kit of parts” at Duxford?

IIRC the THUD arrived at DX sea freight from the USA. Donation or exchange I don’t recall all the ins and outs.

So where did the Wethersfield F-100 go to?

Here it is in the R.Neth.A.F. Museum at Soesterburg, Netherlands wearing yet another false serial. It has been there at least three years.

So where did the Wethersfield F-100 go to?

Wasn’t the F100 brought over from Wethersfield slung under a helicopter when the last USAF personel pulled out,1991,and didn’t it originate from the French Airforce?

No, not quite right! The F-100D at Lakenheath was indeed a former French Air Force machine and wears a false serial. It has been on the pole since at least 1982 and is really 54-2269. It made its last flight into either Sculthorpe or Lakenheath in early 1976. Here it is at Lakenheath in April 1976, shortly after arrival and this is how it looked in 1982 mounted on the gate with its first false serial as ’54-0048′ (I wonder why???) 😉

Only guessing but is the Thud the one that’s now a “kit of parts” at Duxford?

Wasn’t the F100 brought over from Wethersfield slung under a helicopter when the last USAF personel pulled out,1991,and didn’t it originate from the French Airforce?

I seem to recall a photo of the Lakenheath Thud in a display at the Midland Air Museum, Coventry. Think it was a display about their recovery group – didn’t they get the Voodoo and Phantom from Lakenheath? or was it Upper Heyford?

F-100 on the gate at Lakenheath, circa 1991.

Regards,

Paul

PS: What happened to the camo Thud that used to be parked on the other side of the airfield,only visible from the heath at the back of Lakenheath village.

Remember the model/American comic shop in Mildenhall with the link to Mildenhall tower,I happened to be in there one afternoon when they reported the first deployment of F117’s to Lakenheath,we shot over to the end of the runway and watched them taking off,luckily I had my video with me,sure enough at 17:00 while the Stars and Stripes was blasting out the tannoy,one of them made a slow pass across the setting sun,most impressive.
A few years later we went to a craft fair in one of the front hangars,there just happened to be a pair of Starfighters,Italian ?,parked nearby,unfortunately the armed guards wouldn’t let me photograph them and had no knowledge of why they were there,or even what they were.
We managed to sneak off round the main base and view the memorial garden,probably would get shot now.

New base housing was built there it used to be a baseball field opposite the running track. It did affect the construction work a little but it was expected to find some remains there anyway so it was allowed for in the schedule.

Re the Saxon with the horse – the tour guide mentioned this. If memory serves me correctly, they built offices near that plot of land, and the discovery set construction work back as it was a rare and important find.

I had 6 months working with some archeaologists there, driving a digger scraping off topsoil ended up finding well over 200 anglo saxon graves. One even had a horse buried in a grave with a bloke. Found loads of ammunition and even a piece of aircraft from the war.

I did some work for the base back in ’94. I re-designed the profiles of the runway, taxiways and hard standings. The a/c were redeployed to UH whilst the construction work took place, so there was no air activity for about 6 months IIRC.

I was also working briefly at Filton in the mid to late eighties. The USAF F111’s had some sort of servicing carried out there. Great watching the a/c sat running up their engines on full afterburner. Unfortunately no pics were permitted.

The F-111 is an E model from Upper Heyford. Brings back memories from when i was working on the base for just over six months back in 97. They even had the big breakfast show live there near those aircraft back then.