Needham Market
NEEDHAM MARKET: Company helipad
Note: Both of these pictures were obtained from Google Earth ©
NOTES: There are many times when I need to pinch myself and ask if I’m imagining discovering some of this stuff. It all seems so unlikely. However, this information comes from a very respectable source and the report is this; "....from July to September 1978 URSUS-BIZON (GB) Ltd, (a Polish combine harvester company), based a Mil Mi-2 helicopter SP-SEG, (military serial 544538125), at their base in Needham Market." It’s task was to fly spare parts to farms when their combine harvesters had broken down! This happening during the so-called ‘Cold War’.
Thanks to Graham Frost, (a great friend of this 'Guide' looking into this, I can now report that the helicopter was actually SP-SWG, a PZL Swidnick which was a Polish built version of the Russian Mil Mi-2 Hoplite. Graham also managed to pinpoint the location from old very grainy photographs. Needless to say, this industrial estate has been considerably re-developed during the last forty or so years. (Comment posted January 2022)
This said it was during this period that British trucks were travelling through the Eastern Bloc countries to the Middle East. Indeed, I first drove a truck to Greece at around this time, through East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. So I suppose this proves that the ‘Cold War’ was melting at quite a considerable rate. Thinking back this all starts making sense. Cheap obsolete MAN trucks badged ‘ROMAN’ were being imported to the UK, as were the first LADA and SKODA cars. I brought my first ‘Zenith’ SLR camera from the ‘Russian shop’ in Holborn, central London, and was complimented on the results by people using top-notch Canon and Nikon kit.
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