RAF St Mawgan – the unluckiest spotter?

What Beach?

What Aeroplane?

What Manoeuvre?

Clue, I took this in 1983.

Beach – Dunno

Areoplane – Scottish Aviation Bulldog

Manoeuvre – Stall Turn ?

What Beach?
At a guess…Newgale

What Aeroplane?… DHC’s finest

What Manoeuvre?… Looking at the amount of aileron being used…hopefully not a loop :D:D:D
Barrel Roll or Wingover/chandelle ??

Clue, I took this in 1983.

:D:D:D

That was fantastic !Thanks

My Grandparents used to live on the hill leading up to Hensbarrow ( sp) beacon, just outside of Roche.
Looking out of their front room window you could see the beacon/hilltop and one of the main runway ‘ homing’ beacons.
As such, aircraft spotting was great fun, just look out of the window and enjoy all the fun of plane spotting and from the comfort of indoors.

Sadly the RAF adopted a new approach route in the late 80’s and after that aircraft sightings went down by around 99%, but you could always go out in the back yard at night and hear all the different aircraft taxying/taking off.

Never thought about it at the time, what happened to that WWII bowser on the nose?? I’m sure it didn’t go for scrap.

Wasn’t that part of the airports “historic” vehicle collection Baz?:D

Still, not too far removed from what we were using up to the end.

poor old 756 got the chop ultimately:(

Never thought about it at the time, what happened to that WWII bowser on the nose?? I’m sure it didn’t go for scrap.[/QUOTE]

What about the airfield bus and trailer behind it as well.

St Mawgan memories

Having just come across this nostalgic look back at St Mawgan, I wonder if anyone can help jog my bad memory by providing more details of a rather special event there in 1976, possibly during the spring or summer months. My own sketchy recollections are as follows:

I was working in the Ops Block when word went around that a number of Vulcans were inbound from Waddington and Scampton. I think it may have been between 1600 and 1700 hours on a Friday afternoon, just as we were preparing for the weekend. Rapid arrangements had to be made to accommodate our visitors and I think we had to move our Nimrods from their usual positions to make room for them.

A little later I watched the Vulcans arrive from the Tower but again my bad memory precludes giving an exact number of aircraft involved, although I believe it may have been 20. Ten from each Base.

At home the following day I had a visitor who had driven past the Base on his way to me. His first words were “I didn’t realise St Mawgan was V Bomber Base!”. A day or so later I watched them depart (a very noisy occasion) although one didn’t make it, going unserviceable (I think) on the ground.

Can anyone fill in the gaps?.

I have an amusing tale about St Mawgan. In 1973, my then girlfriend and our friends set off down to Cornwall for a camping holiday. We’d never been around there before and after struggling to find a campsite, we ended up on a site at Tregurrian.

Tregurrian camp site is indeed right on the 13 approach and almost on the threshold, always amazed me that a campsite could be that close to a nuclear equiped base with only a creaky 3ft fence seperating the two camps!
Got some marvelous pics from there though!
The camp site got steadily nearer with the approach lane being used as their rubbish tip, the new 7ft steel fence the council have put up has moved it further away now.

Apologies to all for getting off the St Mawgan track, but your story PT reminded me of an occasion while cycling home from the east coast with a friend at the end of a camping trip. We ran out of daylight and decided that there was no way we were going to make it home. Just about had the energy to pitch the tent in a quiet corner near the by-road and bedded down completely unaware (due to darkness) of our position near the RAF. The reds chose that night to send a Bear over and a pair of Lightnings were scrambled. We were awoken by mind-numbing noise at about 1.30AM and out of the tent in seconds on pure adrenaline but the two pairs of afterburners already half a mile high overhead on a 45 degree climb out told the story. Took us a while to calm down!
I expect a lot of us have had that kind of thing happen in our youth.

Great pics and stories Spitfireman.

I have an amusing tale about St Mawgan. In 1973, my then girlfriend and our friends set off down to Cornwall for a camping holiday. We’d never been around there before and after struggling to find a campsite, we ended up on a site at Tregurrian. Unfortunately, my friends road map didn’t show the airfield, I must have had a vague knowledge of it, but not where we were in relation to the runway, ie directly in line with the end of it.
It was only after we’d put the tents up that I was aware of a Nimrod heading straight for us and getting lower, very low in fact, and straight over our heads, I thought it was great, but the others didn’t share my enthusiasm, particularly when the Nimrods were flying at night.
Unfortunately I never recorded what I saw, certainly Nimrods and Shackletons but I have a vague recollection of other things including Starfighters.
It wasn’t long before we abandoned the site and went to Paignton instead, not that I was that bothered, by coincidence we were a few hundred yards down the road from the Torbay Aircraft Museum.

I had a look on Google Earth and you can still see happy campers off the end of the runway, strange layout for an airfield, I presume it has a lot to do with the topography.
Incidentally, Google Earth shows a Spitfire parked in someone’s garden at the eastern end of the runway, I’m assuming it’s a GRP example, whats the story behind this.

Thanks guys. Shackleton explains the dihedral! (and the vague impression of a blue fus.)

Blimey its parked on exactly the same pan as WL795 was between ’81 and ’89!
Mind you she was pulled around a bit those days.

Its AEW.2 WL795 before it was dragged from the Northern loop and restored for the station gate guard.

eye4wings – it’s a Shackleton AEW2. I guess from the text that there was an exercise underway at the time, 8 Squadron often participated in these and parked where it can be seen in spitfiremans photo.

Spitfireman,

I keep looking at your pic of the Bucc doing a noisy pass (can’t you just hear it!?) and, as is my habit, looking at the background after a cursory glance at the main subject. There is a very out of focus aircraft sitting on the ground to the subject’s right (on its belly?) that has the general look of a FW189 – which I am quite sure it cannot possibly be. Can you put me out of my misery by telling me what it is? My only guess is an Argosy sitting in a dip, but it has too much dihedral.

Also I note that the pilot of your engine-out Devon has compensated with tab. I only quite recently learned (paid attention to) the way trim tabs work, and this is a graphic illustration of the power tabs exert. I half expected to see a bootful of rudder applied in the circumstances, but it all looks nicely under control.

A couple of very nice pics – thanks for letting us see them.

Yes it was perfect, I have a video and a clever photo sequence of it.
The weather was a lovely sunny day, everyone on the camp turned out to watch it (as was the norm back then). It stayed straight on the runway until the speed fell right off and slid across the R/W lights which sparked under it.
The Bucc remained at Mawgan for a while, I’m guessing because it was near end of service and wasn’t worth repairing. Seemed to remember that it was partially stripped there and the radome was definately in the scrap compound for ages afterwards.

The Bucc incident which Pagen01 refers to, is that of XW543. To put the record straight, 543 was being flown by W/C Dave Bolsover, when it developed a total hydraulics failure, with SM being the closest airfield for emergency diversion, W/C Bolsover, expertly brought the Bucc in for a text book gear up landing.

Here is a pic of her after she had been stripped of all useful spares.

XZ599

I saw Sea King XZ599 on its side the day after its ‘mishap’ in 2001. XZ599 was rebuilt and flew again a couple of years later. In fact it was the last Sea King to leave St Mawgan on the 12th May this year.

It was the Stn Cdr that had the unfortunate with the Sea King. He was a great chap and the most amiable and open one I have met. He gave a speech to our Aviation Group one night and started by saying ‘before anyone asks, yes I am the chap that crashed the Sea King on the North side!’
A medic who was visiting the tower at the time, apparently uttered ‘is that usual’ as the chopper roled to one side, dropped from the air, and then beat itself to death on the tarmac.
Bits of carbon fibre embedded themselves in the brand new airport hangar some distance away..
The worst thing about it is that the RAF wanted to recreate the situation that occured (hitherto thought impossible), and they subsequently wrote off another Sea King at Boscombe!

I’ve never heard of the Luftwaffe Phantom coming off the R/W, would love to know more.
Well known SM incidents were the Lightning that ditched in Newquay bay (pilot ejected over the camp) after it suffered control restrictions at an Exeter airday, the Victor that rolled off the end of 13 T/H and ended up bogged down on arrival to SM airday, Canberra TT.18 WJ680 that twice suffered main gear collapses (navigator had to eject both times, once after rudder hinge problems – still flying in Australia), Nimrod fire, Nimrod U/C collapse, and the Buccaneer with U/C collapse.
Quite remarkabely, and thankfully, there wasn’t a fatal crash at SM since WW.II until the Cessna about five years ago.

Knew Chris very well, top bloke, and his (I think!) brother Jeremy – small world eh!

Does anyone remember my cousin Chris L – the ex-milkman from Helston who was at St Mawgan most Wednesdays?

If Chris wears shorts all the time (even when it’s cold and wet), I have met him. A very friendly and knowlegable chap.

The only time I witnessed a mishap at St Mawgan was during the summer hols in 1977. I was on the local bus down to Newquay, as we passed St Mawgan on the St Columb to Newquay road I saw a Luftwaffe Phantom on the grass by the Runway 31 threshold surrounded by vehicles. The Phantom had overun the runway by about 100 yards. To be fair to the pilot the weather was foggy with about 1/4 mile visibility.

I saw Sea King XZ599 on its side the day after its ‘mishap’ in 2001. XZ599 was rebuilt and flew again a couple of years later. In fact it was the last Sea King to leave St Mawgan on the 12th May this year.