RAF Newton For Sale

Welcome to the forum gyp, that story brought a smile on an otherwise wet and dull day, I have read before that Atcherley was quite a character.
Shame there are not so many around today or if there are we don’t get to hear of them.

Regards,
Phil A

“There is another RAF airfield close-by(north-east ish), but can’t quite recall it’s name it was mainly used for Venture motorgliders.”

That airfield is RAF Syerston, Home of the Air Cadet Central Gliding school. they operate Vigilant T1s and Viking TX1s. I done my gliding scholarship there : )

I think they also have a concrete runway as well? ( i was in the Viking so i did not need it!)

Used RAF Newton for our accomodation and mess for the week.

I remember two Seaking Commando helicopters that stayed for a night stop at Newton.

I was told by someone that worked at Newton when it was operational that ; “they will never close Newton as its the RAF’s last grass airfield and they need it for training BBMF pilots”.

Obviousley he was wrong on both counts!

The Vulcan was a B1A XA 905, which was the first B1 delivered to the RAF apparently. Broken up in the mid 70’s.

I did a lot of gliding from Newton in the late 50s when it was the base for No 2 Gliding Centre which trained instructors for the Air Cadet weekend schools. The airfield had what I believe was a unique feature in that the designated runway had an 11 degree kink in it.

This arose because a previous Sation Commander was one Batchy Atcherley – in his youth a member of the RAF’s High Speed Flight which cleaned up the Schneider Trophy in 1931. Batchy started every day with a spirited beat-up of the airfield in his personal mount, usually a Spitfire and I had enjoyed many of these when my posting had earlier co-incided with Batchy’s at Cranwell.

By the 50s he had moved on to a Meteor. When he arrived at Newton he found that the runway was officially too short for his Meteor so he sat down with the plans, drew the longest line possible, then bent it sufficiently to make the new ‘runway’ just long enough for his morning workouts to continue to delight his troops.

Joe, the RAF still have grass airfield(s), RAF Henlow being a prime example.

Had a few hours in Chippy’s at Newton:D , great fun. There is another RAF airfield close-by(north-east ish), but can’t quite recall it’s name it was mainly used for Venture motorgliders.

RAF Newton would make the perfect site for a living museum….

so out with those endowment policies everyone:D ….

A similar thing was done when a pair of Vulcans were delivered to No1 School of Technical Training at RAF Halton,the aircraft landing on the 3,700ft grass runway.A number of other large aircraft were delivered to the site in this way,including a Comet C.2!
Here’s just one piccy from Airliners.net,but if you do a search for ‘Halton’ under the ‘airport’ category,it comes up with a whole load of pics taken in the sixties and seventies-Canberras and Provosts galore!

www.airliners.net

Originally posted by f4
What? When on earth was that?!

It was the final flight of a B1 when Newton was a Technical Training School.

Before my time, but I have seen pictures of it (and the ruts it left in the grass!!).

I have got the gen on it somewhere but I am sure one of the Vulcan experts will be able to dig it up before me.

What? When on earth was that?!

Another good airfield gone to waste!

Hangars refurbished in 1996, and in typical MOD fashion airfield closed shortly afterwards.

The married quarters are set to become one of the Governments asylum villages – great.

I think it was the RAF’s last grass airfield, mind you this small technicality did not stop them from landing a Vulcan on it!.

How much? 😀 :p