RAF Airfields – Help needed please!!!

Code letters

Morning All,

Folks, I’m after your help again please.

Harvey has sent me another picture of a Wellington Bomber taken at RAF Church Broughton in August 1944.

As a lot of you know, RAF Church Broughton was a satellite to RAF Lichfield which was home to 27 O.T.U.

Can anyone supply any details as to the ‘A’ marking on the fuselage? I’m trying to work out the serial number also but think the first letter might be a ‘T’. Also the ‘Mk’ of the aircraft? I’ve just noticed the ‘A’ on the nose of the aircraft also, what was the significance of this?

As ever, your help and assistance is most appreciated.

Regards,

Pat.

The individual code ‘A’ is the aircraft identity within the unit. Some units used a single letter code for the aircraft, others used a units code, ‘DX’ for example on 57 Sqn on one side of the fuselage roundel and the individual letter on the other. This identified the aircraft and unit to others. The serial which was situated near the tailplane would be, for example, T4897 or BD765, AA995 and so on. from this you should be able to trace the aircraft movements from unit to unit or until it crashed or was shot down. Several good books published by Air Britain cover individual aircraft histories by serial number and you can also get information from the RAF Museum or the RAF Air Historical Branch on individual aircraft. Hope this helps. 🙂

Afternoon All,

I’m after some help and assistance once again please!!! My research into the airfield has produced some amazing results. The biggest of these results is the fact that I am now in contact with several RAAF veterans, all Australian, who served with the RAF during the war and served for various periods at Church Broughton between 1942 and 1944.

Several of them have mentioned various ‘goings on’ at the T2 hangar that remains on site today. One veteran describes seeing a modified Wellington Bomber with a jet engine slung underneath. Another veteran recalls “The activity on the other side of the aerodrome (out of bounds) where there was a jet engined Wellington and a jet Mustang doing tests, nice warm exhaust fumes.” This was dated 7th November 1944.

From what I can gather from my research, the Rolls Royce testing was carried out between April 1944 to an unknown date in 1946.

I had the following reply from Rolls Royce – “The aircraft the Aussies are referring to is the Wellington flying test bed. The bomber was modified by removing the rear turret and mounting a jet engine in its place. There was never a jet-powered Mustang so your correspondent is mistaken. However, it’s possible that he may have seen the Lockheed P-80 prototype which was lent to RR to test the Nene because there was no suitable British aircraft available. The P-80 arrived at Hucknall in June 45 and, with the Nene installed, flew to CB in July for testing.”

If anyone can help me in finding out more then it would be most appreciated, e.g. organisations or people to get in contact with, documents, photos etc… As it would be a great addition to my research and something to feed back to my veteran’s friends just in case they never found out what was going on at the airfield!!!

Kind Regards,

Pat.

Hi All,

Just a quick update and a request for more assistance.

I have received replies from several Australian RAAF veterans
The below e-mail from Ken Haizelden lists many Wellington serial numbers.

“Hello Patrick, your Email has been passed to me by our wireless operator, an old Australian crew mate. We were at Lichfield for a short time to make up the crew, but initially the two gunners did some gunnery practice there, our crew was two Aussies and five English. Once we formed the crew we were posted to Church Broughton, a lovely spot, where we did our training as a crew on Wellingtons. None of the numbers that you gave us were relevant to any Wellies that we flew in. We have the Wellington numbers that we flew on at Church Broughton, none of them coincide with those that you have sent, they are as follows – H NA909, A X3650, K MF440, L NC653, F Z1746, M PG123, I 910, J 911, W HE 234, X JA480,T LN499, Y Mf951, B 253, A 260, C NC947, WE881, ON568, I hope these will help you. We did our OTU training there and then went 1654 HCu at Wigsley.”

Can anyone assist me in acquiring more information about these particular aircraft.

As ever, your help and assistance is gratefully appreciated.

Regards,

Patrick.

Afternoon All,

Just a quick question? I’m currently off work for a few weeks and want to investigate further! I live in Sutton Coldfield, and armed with my car and my sat nav I fancy venturing out in order to research some more.

If any one has any suggestions of where to go and visit in order to find out more about RAF Church Broughton or indeed my other posts on 75 OTU then I’m all ears!!!

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Pat.

Morning All,

Here is another photograph of Flying Officer RAAF Harvey Lade (3rd from right) and his crew at 1658 Heavy Coversion Unit, Riccall, Yorkshire in December, 1944. He went there after Church Broughton.

The plane is, of course, a Halifax Mk. 3.

Regards,

Patrick.

No expert, but think they are all Mk. X’s from the long intake on top of the cowling

Paul

Morning All,

Folks, I’m after your help again please.

Harvey has sent me another picture of a Wellington Bomber taken at RAF Church Broughton in August 1944.

As a lot of you know, RAF Church Broughton was a satellite to RAF Lichfield which was home to 27 O.T.U.

Can anyone supply any details as to the ‘A’ marking on the fuselage? I’m trying to work out the serial number also but think the first letter might be a ‘T’. Also the ‘Mk’ of the aircraft? I’ve just noticed the ‘A’ on the nose of the aircraft also, what was the significance of this?

As ever, your help and assistance is most appreciated.

Regards,

Pat.

Try abebooks.com. There are two copies of Journey listed in Australia. No Moon Tonight is available as well. I can photo-copy the relevant sections of the books for you but the originals are well worth acquiring!

Atcham, thanks for that.

I finally managed to get hold of a copy of ‘No Moon Tonight’ but I’m still trying to get hold of ‘Journeys Into Night’ both by Don Charlwood of course.

I also managed to get hold of ‘Strike Hard, Strike Sure’ by Ralph Barker and ‘Enemy Costguard’ by Guy Gibson V.C. I’m reading them both at the moment.

Kind Regards,

Pat.

Try abebooks.com. There are two copies of Journey listed in Australia. No Moon Tonight is available as well. I can photo-copy the relevant sections of the books for you but the originals are well worth acquiring!

Ref the Trent powered Meteor, I remember that Loughborough University had one of those early Trent engines on display in their Engineering Department about ten years ago.

Rob

I have extremely limited knowledge of Wellingtons, and even that’s an exaggerration.

However, the one in the background I believe to be a Mk.X and the one in the foreground probably isn’t…

Afternoon All,

Thought you might like an update of where I’m up to with the research. Well it’s going great at the moment.

I placed an advert in the Ashbourne Telegraph but so far I have received one reply from a chap offering me a site plan for Ashbourne airfield. I also sent a letter to the ‘Odd Bods’ publication after I received an e-mail from an ex RAAF W/O by the name of Bruce Evans. Bruce replied in response to my other thread here on the forum to do with 75 OTU in North Africa.

Actually Bruce is after a favor if anyone is able to help. This is part of his e-mail: “I wonder if you have any way of finding out if my skipper, Gordon Latter-Stapley is still with us. He lived in Burns Crescent, Tonbridge, Kent. It is well over 10 years since I was last in touch. I hesitate to write to that address after so long”.

Anyway, back to my topic, which in this case is Church Broughton airfield. A few days ago I received an e-mail from another ex RAAF Flying Officer – Harvey Lade. He read my letter in the ‘Odd Bods’ publication and sent me his account of his time during the war. This morning he sent me a crew photograph of him and three others in front of a couple of aircraft whilst he was stationed at Church Broughton for 8 weeks. The photo was taken on August 1944.

Now I know they are Wellingtons, but as ever from you guys here, can you tell me what actual Mk’s are? I’m thinking after consulting various books that they could be either Mk III’s or Mk 10’s??? I’m not sure and am prepared to be corrected and bow down to the superior knowledge of everyone else on this forum.

Kind Regards,

Pat.

P.S. – Left to Right is Dick Stackhouse (Air-gunner), Bert Koorey (Bomb-Aimer), Harvey Lade, (Pilot) and Stan Carter (Wireless Operator).

RAF Airfields

pobrien 31.
Glad that you got hold of Guy.
I have known Robin for more years than I care to remember. I’ll put you in direct touch. He won’t mind….he’s like that.
If you email me on: [email]mjefferson@blueyonder.co.uk[/email] I’ll give you the info.

Mally, thanks for that.

Mr. Jefferson has been most helpfull and has sent me some information.

Does any one know if Robin J Brooks frequents these boards? I would like to get in touch with him regarding one of his publications on airfields.

Many thanks.

Pat.

RAF airfields help

You can always try Guy Jefferson via his superb web site at

www.airfieldhistoriesuk.fsnet.co.uk

I see that CB is listed.

Good luck
BTW it’s a free service which is remarkable indeed. He’s a Yorkshireman.

Hi,

Does anyone know where I can get hold of a copy of ‘Journeys Into Night – by Don Charlwood? Or does anyone have a copy they could part with?

I’ve tried the usual searches across the net and have been in touch with a few contacts but no joy.

He is mentioned in great detail in the Bomber Base book that I just received and would like to read either of the early 2 books he wrote, the other one being ‘No Moon Tonight’.

Regards,

Pat.

Unbelievable, I thought I’d just give google a whirl and what do you know I got a hit on Wellington X3941 !!!

http://www.peakdistrictaircrashes.co.uk/1939-1945×3941.htm

Regards,

Pat.

As mentioned in the previous post, I’m after some more help from you all if possible!!!

I finally managed to track down a copy of ‘Bomber Base – A History of Royal Air Force Lichfield and Church Broughton’ by Malcolm L Giddings (Colerne Debden Publishing 1986).

In the appendix the author lists many examples of aircraft serials which served at 27 O.T.U. during the war. It doesn’t indicate if the aircraft were written off or if they were rendered unserviceable because of any incident involved. The unit code letters allotted to number 27 O.T.U were: UJ, BB, and EN.

I would love to find out more about several of the aircraft that flew from Church Broughton – if anyone can help or at least point me in the right direction it would be gratefully appreciated.

Wellington – W5668 – Church Broughton – 27OTU – 13 Oct 1942
Wellington – X3941 – Church Broughton – 27OTU – 26 Oct 1942
Wellington – X3719 – Church Broughton – 27OTU – 16 Oct 1944

Regards,

Pat.

Evening All,

It’s been about 6 months or so since I posted this topic so I thought I would post an update for those interested.

I have had a reply from Rolls Royce and it reads as follows….
——————————-
Hello Patrick,
Your question has been forwarded to the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust which looks after the history of Rolls-Royce.

First, however, as I read your message I get the impression that you believe that Church Broughton was the RR Hucknall site. Just to clarify, this is not so: RR Hucknall lies just to the east of the M1 between junctions 26 & 27 and its airfield, opened in 1916, is still in use by RR’s Merlin Flying Club. Church Broughton, home of 27OTU where mainly Australian aircrew did their training on Wellingtons, was used by the Company for a while from about 1945 as Hucknall had no tarmac runways which were better for jet aircraft. The Flight Test Facility used the hangar which still exists on the CB airfield site.

Following is the basic info on both the Trent engine and the Meteor aircraft which became the first turboprop aircraft to fly.

The engine, designated RB50 Trent, was built to investigate combinations of jet thrust and propeller propulsion. It first ran in June 1944, and over 1000 hours of subsequent ground and flight testing provided information which gave Rolls-Royce an early lead in the use of propellers and reduction gears in conjunction with gas turbine power units. Basically the Trent was a Derwent 2 in which the gearcase at the front of the engine was modified to drive a five-blade propeller via a long shaft. It was really only a ‘proof-of-concept’ project, and never intended as a practical powerplant. Conversion of the Meteor to take the Trent was done by RR and its programme of testing yielded invaluable experience in turboprop handling. The Meteor was a Mk.1, EE227/G, and its first flight took place in September 1945 at Church Broughton airfield about 22 miles WSW of the RR Flight Test Aerodrome at Hucknall.

Modifications to the Meteor included a strengthened undercarriage with an additional six inches of ground clearance for the 7ft. 7in. Rotol propellers. These propellers absorbed 750 hp with a residual thrust from the engine of 1000lb.

The machine was first flown with independent controls for the throttle and the propeller constant speed unit, and unless the coordination of the controls was correct, very rapid changes in thrust were encountered which severely upset the characteristics of the machine.
As a result of these unsatisfactory flying qualities, smaller diameter propellers (4ft.10½in) were fitted which would absorb only 350 hp and the jet pipe diameter decreased to raise the thrust to 1400 lb. Although this made the Trent-Meteor virtually a jet-propelled aircraft, it enabled flight development of the engine to continue and provided useful data for the single-lever-control which was used in later testing. With the incorporation of this scheme the excellent flying qualities of the Meteor were restored. The Trent Meteor carried out around 100 hours of test flying.

I’m sorry but I don’t have any info on Eric Greenwood who was a Gloster test pilot.

I have attached photos of both the Meteor and the original engine with the larger propeller. These photos are the copyright of the Rolls-Royce Heritage Trust and must be credited as such if published.

I hope this answers your questions.

Regards
Peter Kirk
RRHT Engine Data
(c) 2005 Rolls-Royce plc
————————————-

I’ll post another update shortly as I’m after some information……

Regards,

Pat.

There doesn’t seem much to say about Church Broughton. Following comes from Action Stations (number 3) . It was a bit disconcerting finding it in that volume as it’s supposed to cover Wales and the North-West.
It was a satellite for Lichfield and replaced Tatenhill in August 1942. Based units were 27 OTU, 1429 Czech Operational Training Flight and 93 Group Screened Pilots Pool. Military flying ceased on 22/6/1945.

The Trent-Meteor EE227 first flew on 20/9/45 piloted by Eric Greenwood. It was the worlds’ first turboprop aircraft to fly.