Twatt
TWATT: Military aerodrome, Royal Naval Air Station
(HMS TERN 1948 Books of HMS FULMAR)
Note: This first picture (2010) was obtained from Google Earth ©
The aerial photo and map were very kindly provided by Mr Michael T Holder in June 2020
Military user: WW2: RN Fleet Requirements Unit
Location: W of A967, SSW of Twatt, W of Biggin - and this I’d put money on! According to the ‘bible’ of this period, the excellent ‘Military Airfields’ by Steve Willis and Barry Hollis which I have constantly used for many years, it does appear that they relied mainly on ‘official’ records, and in their Omnibus Edition state that TWATT is 12 miles ESE of Kirkwall. This is nonsense, TWATT was 20nm NW of Kirkwall town! This said I have made enough bloomers already and who knows how many more are in store within this 'Guide'?
Period of operation: 1941 to 1949
Runways: WW2: 01/19 914x27 hard 05/23 914x27 hard
11/29 942x27 hard 15/33 1097x27 hard
NOTES: This was another feature I noted along the way. Although the Royal Navy had often shorter and narrower runways than the RAF in WW2, and, they fairly often had four runways to use as opposed to three and sometimes only two bigger runways favoured by the RAF. I imagine this was due to the influence of Navy pilots needing to land on aircraft carriers - but was this actually the reason?
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