Honington
HONINGTON: Military aerodrome (Later GA use)
Note: All these pictures were obtained from Google Earth ©
Note: The aerial picture of Honington was taken by the author, through perspex at a great distance.
Military users: RAF Bomber Command
Between the wars:
75 Sqdn (Avro Ansons, Handley Page Harrows & Vickers Wellingtons) July 1938 to July 1939
77 Sqdn (Hawker Harts & Vickers Wellesleys) July 1937 to July 1938
102 Sqdn (Handley Page Heyfords) July 1937 to July 1938
215 Sqdn (Handley Page Harrows & Vickers Wellingtons)
WW2: RAF Bomber Command
9 Sqdn (Vickers Wellingtons later Avro Lancasters)
311 (Czech) Sqdn (Vickers Wellingtons)
8th USAAF (Station 375) VIII Fighter Command
67th Fighter Wing 364th Fighter Group
383, 384 & 385 Sqdns (North American P.51 Mustangs & Lockheed P-38 Lightnings)
322nd Bomb Group
(Martin B-26 Marauders)
385th Bomb Group
(Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress)
A subsidiary operation was based here, the 1st Strategic Air Depot called TROSTON. Specialising in the repair of the B-17 Flying Fortress it supported the 3rd Bomb Division. Badly damaged B-17s coming back from missions were often instructed to land here , or crash-land if the undercarriage failed to lower.
Post 1945: 1948 – TCMSU (Transport Command Major Servicing Unit)
RAF Bomber Command
7, 44, 90 & 199 Sqdns (Vickers Valiants)
Note: 199 Squadron, at least, had ECM (Electronic Counter Measures) equipment fitted.
10 Sqdn (English Electric Canberras)
Note: It appears that 44 and 57 Squadrons also flew the Canberra from here.
12, 15, 16 & 208 Sqdns (Blackburn Buccaneers)
15 Sqdn (English Electric Canberras, then Blackburn Buccaneers and later Panavia Tornados)
(It seems Avro Shackletons also operated from here?)
55, 57 & 543 Sqdns (Handley Page Victors)
Note: 543 Squadron were flying the Victor SR2 photo-reconnaissance version), and 55 and 57 Squadrons the Victor B1/B1A bomber version. It should be noted that when 55 and 57 Squadrons were at RAF MARHAM in NORFOLK their Victor bombers were later converted to tankers.
1980s +: 9, 13 & 45 Sqdns (Panavia Tornados)
TWCU (Tornados)
Flying Club: For a few years since 2000? Honington Aero Club
Location: E of the A134, W of the A1088, about 4/5nm S to SSE of Thetford, and about 7nm N to NNE of Bury St Edmunds
Period of operation: Military - 1937 to mid-1990s. GA Activity since it appears
Note: This map is reproduced with the kind permission of Pooleys Flight Equipment Ltd. Copyright Robert Pooley 2014.
Runways: WW2: One with steel matting = 10/28 1829x37 grass
Other directions: NE/SW 1280 grass SE/NW 1280 grass
2000: 09/27 2747x45 hard
2012: 09/27 1220x45 hard
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
Note: All the photos are from the American Air Museum unless otherwise attributed.
Note: The second item is the Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress, 42-31922, of the 385th Bomb Group. The fourth item is the Lockheed P-38J Lightning, 43-28760, named "Pretty Mickey" of 385 Squadron, 364th Fighter Group.
Note: This fifth item is a picture taken in September 1943. The seventh item shows two North American P-51 Mustangs of the 364th Squadron taking off in tandem.
Note: The twelth item is of the Technical Site, from the "Mighty Eighth War Manual" by Robert A Freeman. The fourteenth item is the Martin B-26 Marauder, 41-17996, of the 322nd Bomb Group, taken on the 15th May 1943. The local area view is from my Google Earth © derived database.
A MEMORY OF HONINGTON
Mike Holder served in the V-Bomber Force on Vulcans, later on Comets and Nimrods.
"It was under care and maintenance in 1965; the Valiants were scrapped and the two Victor Squadrons were moved to Marham. In 1968 we (44 Sqn Crew 8) were sent down there with another crew (50 Sqn) to practise our dispersal procedures, the main runway had ORPs - Operational Readiness Platforms - at the end of the westerly runway - parking for 4 V bombers and the ability to "plug-in" and listen to the "Bomber Controller" awaiting orders to "Scramble". Being a "V" Force Station it had an "Aircrew Feeder" to keep us fed; we housed next door in a Seco Hut - one large room for the ten of us. Not long after arrival we were stood down and so we decided to "hit" Bury St Edmunds - the "Las Vegas" of rural Suffolk. The Nav Plotter took us to a quaint little pub near the town centre - little being the operative word; once the crew got inside it was crowded. We were perhaps a little too boisterous for the place and were politely asked to leave. The night finished in a Fish and Chip shop and it was back to Honington for some shut eye prior to the scramble the next day. The Taxi Driver told us he could only take 4 passengers and not a complete crew of 5 - there are only four said the captain - I was lying over the prop shaft tunnel behind the front seats out of sight. It was not a very comfortable trip back to Honington with three sets of feet on top of me."
"I went back again in 70/71 with another crew - I had retrained as a Nav Plotter and was no longer a Nav Radar. The aircrew feeder was still there but now the Station was up and going with Buccaneers and there was no room at the Inn; we stayed in the 5 man caravans the RAF had purchased for V Force Crews so they could sleep near their aircraft - except ours couldn't have been much further from the ORPs - being located next to Ops Wing. The V Force caravan was a ghetto on wheels; it had 5 compartments - one for each crew member - and each one had a bed the width of a British Rail luggage rack, a wash basin the size of a soup plate and a wardrobe wide enough to hang up a flying suit. Your aircrew holdall and nav bag lay on the floor and there was just about room for your flying boots. If you tried to roll in your bed - you fell out and the subsequent crash would wake up the rest of the crew. Heating? What was that?"
"The fly off was just before dawn - trip across the North Sea - descent to low level and fly down the length of Denmark and across North Germany to attack the Lightning base at Gutersloh. What the Danes had done to deserve a fly past of about 15 Vulcans just after dawn I do not know - I suppose it comes with the territory, ie a member of NATO. As we approached about 20 miles from Gutersloh and the Nav Radar had given the "steer" to the target, I jumped out of my seat and stood on the ladder between the pilots to watch the attack. The sun had just come up and we had not seen any Lightnings so far - would we get to the target without being "bounced"? Nah, with about 15 miles to go a stream of Lightnings shot past us, including one cheeky sod who barrel rolled round us! Shot to bits! Ah well - back to Waddington for tea, stickies and medals."
NOTES:
COMPARATIVE STRENGTH
When Britain entered the war in September 1939, the RAF had 608 first-line fighters against the 1,215 of the Luftwaffe, and 536 bombers against 2,130. But of course these figures can be very misleading if you consider how they were deployed. The RAF fighters did a magnificent job during the so called 'Battle of Britain' of course, but Bomber Command's efforts were a dismal failure from 1939 to 1941 at least.
The bomber aircrews by and large showed an amazing amount of resolve and bravery, but were kept in the dark about how very little they were achieving. The Fairey Battle and Bristol Blenheim were nigh on useless, often mounting suicidal missions with no worthwhile result. With the 'heavy' bombers, the Hampden, Wellington and Whitley the crews suffered lower losses, but also achieved next to nothing.
Put bluntly, with the 'heavies' they had no appropriate training, (or effective equipment), and often had little or no experience of operations over a blacked-out Europe. And often couldn't find the right country to bomb, let alone a target. To all intents and purposes it would have been much better to ground Bomber Command aircraft until 1942, but that of course didn't suit the political picture, let alone government policy.
We had to show the Germans, or rather the Nazi regime, that we were fighting back. Despite the futile results and loss of life. Small wonder that the Nazi top-brass still considered, even in 1942, that the western war was pretty much won. The U-boats were winning the 'Battle of the Atlantic', the RAF were a spent force, most of western Europe had been conquered, and the end of the British Empire was in sight.
What wasn't realised was that the Germans had already developed a radio beam method to guide their bombers to the target area. And British cities soon saw how very effective this was. What hadn't been foreseen, in all the predictions on both sides prior to WW2, was how resilient the public could be to area bombing.
PERSONAL ACCOUNTS
I find personal accounts of WW2 very interesting. Not least because my father had a mostly interesting war - which he told me very little of. After training in north Wales, where local farmers would often shoot at you with shotguns when trying to recover bodies from crashed aircraft on their property, he was then posted to north Africa, flying in Wellingtons as a flight engineer in Libya. For most of my adult life I had believed his version that this was mostly a holiday - until I took some pictures to the RAF Museum in Hendon for an historian to look at. He had no hesitation to inform that the Wellington crews were in the thick of the action. In researching this Guide I now realise that most aircrew consigned to Wellingtons in the UK had really "drawn the short straw".
I would like to quote this passage from John Sweetman in his excellent book Bomber Crew: “Flight Lieutenant Ken Batchelor went to one of the urban areas (Cologne) on the 27/28 November, (My note; this was in 1940), as second pilot in a 9 Squadron Wellington, and recorded his impressions in his diary. ‘My first operational trip. Lovely one too. Dark night, cumulus cloud and stratus haze over Holland. Searchlights and flak from Turnhout. Ran in and found Rhine OK dropped flares and found Hohenzollern Bridge, the target, perfectly.’ Curiously, Batchelor knew Cologne well, having lived there after the First World War when his father was serving in the Army of Occupation. Contrast this to other accounts I have read of being in a bomber stream, and being pretty much sitting ducks, two or more years later!
A DISMAL FAILURE
On the 18th December 1939 nine Wellingtons from No.9 Squadron took part in the raid on German naval shipping at Wilhelmshaven. Not a bomb was dropped due to fear of hitting civilians near the harbour. Only two of No.9 Squadron's Wellingtons made it back to MILDENHALL. For a fuller account please see my listing for FELTWELL.
JUST A NOTE
It appears that when 208 Squadron were reformed here, on the 1st July 1974, with the Hawker Siddeley Buccaneer Mk.2, they were the first UK based Buccaneer overland squadron. Prior to this, I think (?), Buccaneers were solely used by the Royal Navy?
Before moving to LOSSIEMOUTH in 1983, 208 Squadron participated in 'RED FLAG' a joint exercise in Nevada in 1977. It appears they were given clearance to attack targets at 100ft , with outstanding results. A far as I can see, during the wars since, the RAF have always performed the very low level role?
A PERSONAL MEMORY
Flying from Norwich Airport back to Wycombe Air Park in 1992 flying a Cessna 172 late one evening with ‘Aussie’ Brown we’d gained permission to route overhead Honington. We were suddenly instructed to turn south as an emergency had been declared by two USAF F.16s (?). We were also warned to avoid wake turbulence from a KC.135 on approach to MILDENHALL, which we had spotted and avoided. Imagine our delight on turning roughly west to resume our track as these two aircraft came into close view descending into HONINGTON with the second ‘wing-man’ in very close formation. Both aircraft we were told landed safely.
As a general comment from that period, if military ATC decided the ‘pilot’ in a GA aircraft, or at least the person communicating with them, was obviously competent, they had ‘seperation’minima far less than most civil ATC. Which made, on a few occasions, quite exciting fairly close encounters.
SPOTTERS NOTES
In 1977 it seems that the DHC.1 Chipmunk G-APPA, Piper PA-22 Colt G-ARSW and the Evans VP-1 G-BAPP were based here.
AN ENTERTAINING STORY
In the excellent book Victor Boys by Tony Blackman and Carry O'Keefe, they recount this story by Dick Russell who was a Captain and QFI on the Handley Page Victor. The term QRA is for Quick Reaction Alert, a set of circumstances that lasted for many years during the height of the 'Cold War' period.
"Life on 55 Squadron was dominated by QRA and we had four aircraft, two from each Squadron available day and night, 24/7 in modern terms. Each aircraft was in what was called a combat ready state and was started by a bank of batteries controlled by the crew chief outside. Initially, the fuel cocks were left open so that as the crew rushed to the aircraft after call out the captain would shout "start" to the chief, the engines would begin to turn as the captain climbed in and as he got into his seat he would punch the circuit breakers starting the fuel pumps."
"On one unforgettable occassion the captain shouted start but the nav radar broke the key in the door lock. Result, engines running, nuclear bomb on board, no one in the cockpit. The recuperators kept the engines running backed up by some fuel until the groundcrew got an engine door down and shut them off."
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED READING
The book Victor Boys is one of a triology - Valiant Boys and Vulcan Boys being the others. In all cases Tony Blackman is the lead author and what a splendid job he has made; hardly surprising as he learnt to fly in the RAF and was trained as a test pilot. Indeed, on joining A V Roe as chief test pilot, his first job was to do the initial flying on the Victor K2 tanker.
In effect these three books, amply illustrated, are a series of accounts that have been collected from a wide variety of people serving at the sharp end of operations, mostly as air crew. And, do they have some tales to tell. However, with additional information by Tony Blackman and his co-authors, I have never found a more informative account of the realities involved in operating these three now classic 'V' bombers, especially during the 'Cold War'.
HONNINGTON PLAYED A PART IN THE FALKLANDS CONFLICT
Without any doubt whatsoever the RAF involvement in the Falklands conflict was, at best, a cobbled up affair. At the start we, (the British people and our military forces), stood virtually no chance of winning at the outset of this ‘war’ despite what our war-mongering Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher) had to say. GB plc had no proven capability – and that is a fact.
INGENIUTY ‘R’ US
As Rowland White explains in his book Vulcan 607: “ The Buccaneers at RAF Honnington carried a more modern, sophisticated ECM pod – the Westinghouse AN/ALQ – 101D, or Dash 10. It would work, but the weapon pylons under each wing of the Buccaneer meant they had somewhere to hang it. The Vulcan didn’t. With a capacious internal bomb bay, it had never needed to carry stores externally. Chris Pye’s engineers again saved the day when they remembered that the reason why some of the Vulcans had been delivered with the more powerful 301 series Olympus engines was because they’d been expected to be carrying two huge Skybolt missiles – one under wing. Despite Skybolt being cancelled, those 301-engined aircraft must somewhere still have the hardpoints that would have allowed them to carry the big weapon.” And so, the equipment could be transferred from the Buccaneer to the Vulcan.
No.9 or IX Squadron
It appears that IX Squadron which had been flying Avro Vulcan B.2s from WADDINGTON, (LINCOLNSHIRE), (and previously known as No.9 Squadron), were reformed here in the early 1980s to be the first squadron to become operational with the Panavia Tornado GR.1.
HONNINGTON STILL HAS FLYING ACTIVITIES?
An article published in Light Aviation magazine had this to say, regarding a tour by several pilots flying from HENLOW. “Honington closed as a Tornado base in the mid-1990s and has since then been home to the RAF Regiment. The airfield was partially resurrected a few years ago by Honington Aero Club, which uses part of the runway and one of the Hard-ended Aircraft Shelters (HAS) as its hangar. The western end of the runway is blocked and the main dispersal built on, but the eastern half of the runway is in reasonable condition and linked with a taxyway to the HAS.”
Stuart Watson
This comment was written on: 2018-01-06 00:18:40In June 1970 I completed my RAF apprentice training and was posted to 543 Sqn. at RAF Wyton. I duly "arrived" at Wyton and was then "cleared" to proceed to RAF Honington, to which base the whole of 543 Sqn. had been detached while the Wyton runway was resurfaced. The only other aircraft based there at that time were the Buccaneers of 12 Sqn., which, it was said, had recently been "aquired" from the Royal Navy. Memorable moments? My first trip abroad: A two-Victor short detatchment to Akrotiri, Cyprus; I never knew what we were doing there, they don't give groundcrew that sort of info, need to know, you know. Whilst on the flighline there one day, several of us (groundcrew) saw a strange aircraft take off, which, after some debate we identified as a U2. When this sighting was mentioned to others we were told, quite vehemently, that it was a "special Canberra". Yeah, right!
Reply from Dick Flute:
Hi Stuart, Many thanks indeed. I shall certainly keep these memories posted. Best regards, Dick
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