Most impressive reply, thank you, however what exactly was Exercise Flintlock, was it a cover for flying in Sidewinders as Moggy suggested, or just a normal exercise.
Did you manage to get any pictures in the end, there seemed to be about a dozen a/c came in at the time, must have looked interesting coming over the Atlantic.
The event happened in the evening, must have been warm for me to be sitting outside The Henny Swan, but I think it was April/May, probably on a saturday or sunday, there was also a good sunset that evening which made the whole event very surreal, very upset that I didn’t have my trusty Canon with me, and don’t know why I didn’t go home via the airfield as I lived at High Garrett at the time, probably went over the next day and saw nothing as usual.
I was also told at the time by someone who lived near there, that US equipment supplied to the British for use in the Falklands war was being stored at Raydon airfield in Suffolk.

Exercise Flintlock was a NATO wide Special Forces exercise and used to generate all kinds of odds and sods at all the usual ‘covert’ places, Wethersfield, Sculthorpe, para dropping at Watton etc. Correcting my last the 7th SOS were actually based at Frankfurt at the time AFAIR but the parent wing at Hurlburt often deployed ‘unusual’ MC-130s from the States to join the exercise.

I don’t believe any of this activity related to the movement of US arms for the Falklands campaign, most of that traffic was centred on Brize, Mildenhall and Greenham Common AFAIR.

I don’t know anything about the store at Raydon but I do remember that the 10th TRW who parented Wethersfield for a time around this period operated a hangar at Ridgewell which was given up shortly after. I remember having a snoop around there and seeing a large number of F-4 drop tanks in storage outside.

Strange you should live in High Garrett because so did I, in Grove Field!

I do have some photos somewhere but have been unsuccessful in my search, so far.

Good show wasn’t it? What aircraft were you in? I was fortunate enough to be there both days

It was very good. There is something special being about able to fly into such a historic airfield, especially when so many enthusiasts have put so much effort into putting on a great ground and air display.

I brought Piper J-3C Cub, G-ATZM to/from RAF Halton.

I had a great day out at a historic airfield, yesterday and managed to add Boxted to my logbook.

A few pictures of yesterday’s visitors;

A few more visitors to the Flyer Summer Bash @ Enstone

A few detail pictures added at http://www.jhs.flyer.co.uk/Flyboys%20@%20RAF%20Halton/index.html

A few new pictures at http://www.jhs.flyer.co.uk/Flyboys%20@%20RAF%20Halton/index.html

Bristol Fighter returned and SE-5A replica arrived plus a few more pictures from today added at http://www.jhs.flyer.co.uk/Flyboys%20@%20RAF%20Halton/