Manby flying sites
MANBY: Military aerodrome later private airfield
Note: Picture by the author taken through perspex.
Military users: RAF Training Command
Late 1930s at least: No.1 Air Armament School
WW2: RAF Flying Training Command 25 Group
Empire Air Armament School (Hawker Hurricanes, Miles Martinets & Vickers Wellingtons)
Post 1945: RN Air Section, Empire Air Armament School,
RAF Flying College Handling Squadron
1974/75 (Hunting-Percival Jet Provosts)
Location: SW of Grimoldby village, on B1200, 4nm E of Louth
Period of operation: 1938 to 1974 according to one source. Almost certainly operational in 1935?
Note: For probable civil activity see the seperate listing which follows.
Runways: WW2: 11/29 1280x46 hard 04/22 1143x46 hard
NOTES: I imagine the 1509 RAF personnel stationed here in late 1944 were well pleased having 602 WAAFs on station. This is, I believe, amongst the highest ratio of men to women on a WW2 RAF station?
AN INTERESTING ACCOUNT
In his book Storm Front, Rowland White gives an account concerning the fledgling Sultan of Oman’s Air Force: “In March 1959 SOAF’s first seven pilots assembled at RAF Manby, in Lincolnshire, under Squadron Leader Barry Atkinson, the Second World War veteran chosen to bring the Sultan’s new Air Force into existence.” If you are uncertain as to exactly where Oman is, as I was, it is east of Saudi Arabia with South Yemen on its south-western border and the UAE (United Arab Emerites) situated to the north-west. Roughly two-thirds of its coastline, heading north-east and leading up from South Yemen, is in the Arabian Sea which is part of the Indian Ocean. The remainder (heading north-west) is on the Gulf of Oman, a continuation of the Persian Gulf. I make the point because, if you weren’t certain, it helps to understand what follows.
“All seconded from the RAF, they began with just five aeroplanes, three of which had to be flown out to Muscat, (My note: The capital of Oman), from the UK. The journey itself was an adventure and an indication of what was to come. The little piston-engined two seaters (my note: Percival Provosts) took eighteen days to reach Aden, 5,000 miles away, via France, Spain, Algiers, Nigeria, and Sudan. Forty-eight hours in the air. They finally reached Bait al Falaj in August.” Bait al Falaj is the airport for Muscat.
“The camouflaged Hunting Percival Provost T52s were a throwback. Even the manufacturer admitted, when enquiries were first made, that their ‘literature on armed Provosts was now somewhat depleted’. The Provost would have been shown a clean pair of heels by the RAF’s last biplane, the Gloster Gladiator. It was no guntruck either, with just two of the Gladiators four .303 machine guns in the wings. There was something incongruous about young RAF fighter pilots wearing modern bonedome helmets strapping themselves into the old taildraggers while their contemporaries back home looked beyond the sound barrier. But, for all their limitations, they were the sort of aircraft SOAF needed to be getting on with. It needed to walk before it could run. So too did the country itself.”
ARMED TRAINERS
I am pretty certain that, in the UK at least, the concept of providing an armed version of a basic training aircraft for export only came about after WW2? Mainly aimed at emerging third-world countries eager to have an Air Force to call their own. Indeed, was the Hunting P.56 Provost, designed to be an ab initio trainer for the RAF, which first flew in February 1950 and entering RAF service as an unarmed version in 1953, the first British example of this?
The RAF were often co-opted for training and, also quite often, internal military operations involving active combat roles. Presumably the RAF were paid for these services? It appears that maintenance and other back-up, even such as providing armourers, was usually a task assigned to civilian contractors such as Airwork in the UK. I still have somewhat dimmed memories, as a youngster presumably reading Air Pictorial, of a mention of an aircraft being exported to the Sultan of Muscat and Oman. It all seemed somewhat exotic, having no idea where this was, except it was ‘somewhere in the east’.
EXPORTING THE ARMED PROVOST
Looking at Wikipedia it appears the armed Provost did quite well in the export tables. Southern Rhodesia acquired four T.51s in 1953, with another twelve in 1955. The Irish Air Corps took four T.51s in 1954, adding a further six T.53s in 1960. Also in 1954 the presumably newly formed Burmese Air Force brought twelve T.53s and ended up operating forty. The Royal Iraqi Air Force purchased fifteen T.53s, these being delivered from 1955 onwards.
In 1957 the newly formed Sudan Air Force purchased four T.53s, adding three more in 1959 and subsequently a further five modified ex-RAF aircraft. In fact, it seems, the T.52s acquired for Oman were modified ex-RAF trainers as the type was being run down and eventually withdrawn from RAF service in the 1960s. Which might well explain why the Royal Malaysian Air Force acquired twenty-four T.51s between 1961 and 1968.
RE-CYCLING ISN’T ANYTHING NEW
Percival, or as it had then become – Hunting Percival, were not inclined to waste good design features. It may not be too widely appreciated today that the first RAF jet trainer, the Jet Provost, used a substantial amount of the piston-engined Provost airframe – and it worked. The Jet Provost design was developed over the years and arguably the final, and best version, was the BAC Strikemaster, an armed version for export to, more or less, exactly the kind of countries the first armed Provost was aimed at. And indeed, to ‘square the circle’, the type used in Oman in the Dhofar war, once again crewed by seconded RAF pilots and the subject of Rowland White’s excellent book, Desert Storm, which is well worth reading.
MANBY: Private airfield
Operated by: Mr R Hodder
Location: Presumably near the old RAF airfield, if not actually on the site?
Period of operation: Possibly from around 2000 (?) to –
Runway: NE/SW 500 grass
(In 2011 a second 500m runway was being laid out to, “….be more aligned with summer sea breezes in their area.” So presumably E/W?
NOTES: This information came from an article in Light Aviation magazine in Mar 2011. Originally it appears Mr Hodder based his EAA Acrosport G-BSHY here, and, with a couple of farm buildings converted into hangars local pilots were invited. Subsequently a Flitzer, Stolp Starduster, Zenair Zodiac, Stitts SA3A Playboy and a Taylor Monoplane were/are based here. Mr Hodder went on to own a Steen Skybolt and a Vans RV-3 before settling on a Pitts Special S1-C G-BRAA. All in all a classic selection of PFA/LAA types.
It is tempting to think this might be EASTLEIGH FARM, see seperate entry, except the details don't quite fit. If anybody can kindly offer advice, this will be much appreciated.
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