Ansty

Note: I believe this map gives the correct location of the airfield, but I would welcome confirmation. I did once make a delivery to Rolls-Royce, but that was around forty years ago.

ANSTY: Civil aerodrome later military aerodrome

Activities: Mainly military pilot & aircrew training from late 1930s to early 1950s

Operated by: Air Service Training (Armstrong-Siddeley) 1936 to 1938

Elementary & Reserve Flying Training School and Civil Air Navigation School

1930s AFU [Advanced Flying Unit] (Hawker Harts)

Military users in WW2: Royal Air Force Training Command

1939 RAF Elementary Flying Training School and Air Observers Navigation School

Post 1945: RAF Basic Flying Training School 1951 to 1953

Manufacturing: Standard Motors aircraft factory during WW2

Post 1945: Rolls Royce Industrial & Marine Division factory

Location: 5nm NE of Coventry

Period of operation: 1936 to 1953

Runway(s): ‘All-over’ grass? (any details known?)

NOTES: During WW2 Standard Motors built Airspeed Oxfords and DH Mosquitos. It appears that during WW2 27 MU from HIGH ERCALL and 48 MU from HAWARDEN tried using this airfield for storage purposes but apparently it was often water-logged. There is a story that six Blackburn Botha types flown in to ANSTY from HAWARDEN in February 1940 may have sunk in so deep they were never rescued and returned!

THE COLD WAR
This site was used by Armstrong-Siddeley/Bristol Siddeley for rocket research testing and development such as the Stentor and Blue Steel nuclear bomb rocket programmes.

kev knight

This comment was written on: 2018-01-11 12:55:53

Born in 1957, and growing up as a child on the South side of Coventry, I used to hear the screaming noise of the rockets being tested at Ansty. My father worked there during the war building the DH Mosquitos. My mother was a works inspector at the site, having been drafted in from Stoke on Trent for this work....and that's how the couple met. She often commented....''I've been inspecting his work ever since.....''.

Terry Clark

This comment was written on: 2018-02-01 23:34:46

Listed as having 2 asphalt runways:- 03/21 1128m 08/26 1063m

Brian Gardner

This comment was written on: 2018-05-03 18:01:49

I was a RAF trainee pilot with AST from Feb-April 1952 at No2 BFTS Ansty. We used RAF Church Lawford as our satellite: I made my first solo from CL in a Chipmunk. Re the two runways at Ansty: I remember only one (03/21), with the single short taxiway coming to the halfway point, so that we had to backtrack to the take-off point. The rocket engines were under test during my course, but I don't remember too much noise - perhaps we were lucky!

Bill Sutton

This comment was written on: 2018-07-08 12:09:56

My late cousin Fred Haslam briefly worked for Armstrong Whitworth at Coventry but enlisted in the RAF in 1946. Fred once told me that he flew DH Mosquitos from Ansty in his early days with the RAF.

Les Wood

This comment was written on: 2021-04-02 21:29:50

I too did basic flying training in Chipmunks at Ansty August/ September 1952. I managed to go solo before being washed out. As far as I can remember, there was only one runway but we mainly used the grass.

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