Raf Marham

Marham Google earth

This was only discussed here recently!
It is indeed an area cut in the grass known as a clear way, usually cut around approach lighting and approach aids such as PAR and ILS, both of which can be affected by long grass. If the land is flat around an airfield this clear way can extend quite a way out into farmers fields etc.

Looking at airfields on Google Earth is very addictive, I haven’t looked at Marham for a while, but the amount of work at Fairford is astonishing, bet you can’t find a single aircraft on the site for all their efforts.
I was quite interested to have a look at Brise Norton at the same time, ie the other day, and noticed an Illuyshin 76 with roundels on the wings, could this have been the support aircraft for the Indian Air Force visit last summer.
I’ve almost run out of airfields to look at, some of the Welsh and Scottish ones are not of the finest clarity, you can’t beat Davis-Monthan for a bit of spotting of types though, you need your sandwiches for that one.

cheers, having looked a little closer, i see that you are right, concerning the runway it seemed like it had a perry track all the way round it, which typically caused me to jump to a conclusion 🙂

To me it looks like that runway ‘extension’ is simply where the farmer has grassed around the runway lights, rather plant a crop… You’ll see the same if you look at the other end of the airfield.

As for the 3 aircraft… They’re Tornado’s… Look in Wrecks and Relics and you’ll see a photo of them!