Usworth
USWORTH: Military aerodrome later civil aerodrome having regional airport status (Originally known as HYLTON, renamed as USWORTH. Later, after WW2 renamed again as SUNDERLAND AIRPORT)
A MIKE CHARLTON GALLERY
Note: These pictures have been adapted from photographs taken by Mike Charlton on a visit to the North East Aircraft Museum in mid-2018.
First picture: The two aircraft in this picture are Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2 types.
Fifth picture: Note the possible apostrophe missing in the Aerobat Flying Group section of this sign. "Were here" not, as I assume it should be (?) - "We're here." Or, as could well be the case, I'm mistaken?
Military users: WW1: RFC/RAF Initially a Night Landing Ground for 36 Sqdn (Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c’s, B.E.12s, F.E.2s, Bristol F.2b’s) in 1916, then a Home Defence Flight Station 1916 to 1919. Home Defence Squadron HQ from 1918 to 1919
1930s: Royal Auxiliary Air Force
607 Sqdn Initially one Gypsy Moth & two Avro 504Ns for training, operational Westland Wapiti’s arrived later.
1936 Avro Tutors and Hawker Hart trainers, plus Hawker Demon fighters.
1938 Gloster Gladiators
103 Sqdn (1937 Hawker Hinds, 1938 Fairey Battles)
WW2: 1940: RAF Fighter Command 13 Group (Sector Fighter Station)
64 Sqdn (Vickers-Supermarine Spitfires)
607 Sqdn (Hawker Hurricanes)
1941: 55 OTU (Fairey Battles, Hurricanes, Miles Martinets & Masters, DH Tiger Moths.
It is also reported that Boulton Paul Defiants and Blenheims were ‘on base’ plus, possibly, a Harvard or more?. This mish-mash of types at so many WW2 airfields seems astonishing today. Being just a tad practical, (which it seems at face value the RAF certainly weren’t), how on earth did they source spares and organise ‘type-rated’ mechanics, engineers and technicians to maintain these aircraft?
1942/43: 62 OTU Airborne Interception Training Flight, including US Army Signal Corps officers for USAAF Beaufighter Sqdns (Avro Ansons)
From March 1943 it seems the Fleet Air Arm also partly occupied the airfield with 776 Sqdn possibly operating all of the following types: Bristol Blenheim, Blackburn Roc and Skua types plus Vought-Sikorsky SB2U Chesapeakes. It is also rumoured that Fairey Barracuda’s and Grumman Martlets operated from here.
In 1943 the USAAF 416th Night Fighter Sqdn were based here May to June. (Probably flying Bristol Beaufighters)
After July 1943 it seems almost all flying ceased with only one aircraft recorded as landing in January 1944. Later in 1944 No. 31Gliding School, (later 641 GS), was formed here for Air Training Corps. There are substantiated stories that a DH Moth Minor was discovered in a MT shed and with pooled petrol rations Flt. Lt Jimmy Robson, the CO of the Gliding School (and ex PR Spitfire pilot), plus a few others, flew it on several occasions. The story goes that the CO at RAF OUSTON heard about this, andcommandeered it!
1944: RAF Maintence 56 Wing Storage Unit
Post 1945: 31 GS (Falco IIIs, Slingsby Cadets, Sedburghs & Kadet Mk.1s)
1949 to 1953: 23 Reserve Flying School (Avro Ansons, DH Tiger Moths and later DHC.1 Chipmunks)
664 Sqdn (Austers)
No.2 Basic Air Navigation School (Ansons)
Durham University Air Squadron (Tiger Moths)
Operated by: 1965 - Sunderland Corporation
British airlines: Post 1945: Tyne Tees Airways only perhaps? In 1976 it seems 5,419 passengers used SUNDERLAND airport and this grew to 7,182 in 1977
Charter/air taxi: Post 1945: Air Gregory, Air Services (Sunderland), Sunderland Air Charter
Flying Club: From 1963: Sunderland Flying Club
Gliding: Post 1945: Apart from the ATC, (Air Training Cadets), Newcastle Gliding Club also used this airfield
Note: In the 1957 The Aeroplane directory, the fleet of the Newcastle Gliding Club was given as: One high-performance, one secondary, two primary and one two-seater.
1981: Tyne & Wear Gliding Club
Maintenance: 1962: Base for Tyne Tees Airways
Museum: In 1975 the North East Aircraft Museum was established here
Location: 3.5nm W of Sunderland, just N of the river Wear & alongside the B1289
Period of operation: Military: 1916 to 1919, then 1930 to 1958. Civil: 1962 to 1984
Note: The 1965 map is reproduced with the kind permission of Pooleys Flight Equipment. Copyright Robert Pooley 2014.
The aerial picture was taken by Austin J Brown. If looked at closely the runway layouts can still be seen, in part at least.
Runways: Originally probably an ‘all-over’ grass airfield until late 1939 when the airfield and facilities were greatly expanded rendering it unusable until March 1940
WW2: 05/23 732x46 hard 01/19 732x46 hard
1965: 05/23 1080x46 hard 18/36 834x46 hard
NOTES: There is no denying it, we live in a changed world. For many centuries research was done by mainly searching for, finding and reading books. Today we have the web - damn it and bless it. A two-edged sword or fork-tongued devil at best? As my research carried on, searches on the web increased and certainly proved the worth of this medium. In 2005 the whole enterprise appeared lop-sided in as much I was finding precious little about the north-east of England.
So, in May 2005, I punched USWORTH into the search engine, found and printed out twenty-two pages of highly detailed research by Dave Charles which was a delight to discover. From this information I have very selectively sought to expand my own opinions. I owe a great debt to Dave Charles and in other places countless others who have freely offered similar history on the web. Bless them all.
EARLY HISTORY
It appears that this airfield was only becoming known as USWORTH towards the end of 1918. In June 1919 36 Sqdn was disbanded and the airfield closed. However, it does appear that before being nominally re-opened in March 1930 a visit was paid by a Sir Alan Cobham during his 1929 tour. (See below) This said it does seem that flying by 607 Sqdn didn’t start happening until September 1932 so it might have been a later tour.
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
Note. The newspaper article in the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette was published on Monday 10th June 1929.
Note: The sixth item was published in the Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette on the 20th July 1929.
During his 1929 Municipal Aerodrome Campaign, Sir Alan Cobham decided that the old WW1 aerodrome site, HYLTON, would be entirely suitable. His visit was scheduled for 20/21 July and was the 40th venue in a tour that started in May and ended in October, visiting 97 venues. He flew the de Havilland DH61 ten-seater 'Giant Moth' G-AAEV, named 'Youth of Britain'.
Typically he would aim to arrive at around 11.00 and take the local worthies for a quick tour around the local area. Then a slap-up lunch at, typically at the Town Hall, would be followed by his speech to exhort the opening of an aerodrome/regional airport. Then he would fly, typically, forty selected school children, a project funded by Lord Wakefield of Castrol Oil fame, although it appears he preferred to remain anonymous.
Without too much doubt this Cobham Tour helped to kick-off the grand 'Flying Circus' era, which started in 1931 with tours by Aviation Tours, North British Aviation, C D Barnard Air Tours and the Modern Airways tour - known as 'The Crimson Fleet'. Seeing a big business opportunity here, Cobham got involved in 1932 and his subsequent 1933, 1934 and 1935 tours are now the stuff of legend.
EMPIRE AIR DAY DISPLAYS
In the 1930s, along with many other RAF aerodromes USWORTH put on Empire Air Day displays. The first in 1934 attracted 1,300 visitors although it’s said that 3,000 in total actually looked on with the majority standing outside the airfield. By 1937 this figure had risen to just over 14,000 with an estimated 20,000 in total but the ‘show’ was by then a much more spectaclur affair. Those that paid the entrance fee directly contributed to the RAF Benevolent Fund and £637 was raised, the fourth highest total in the UK that year. This may not sound very impressive but £637 in 1937 is estimated to be the equivalent of £500,000 in 1995. Sadly the 1938 display was ruined by poor weather.
WORLD WAR TWO
As banged on elsewhere I mention No.64 Squadron being based here in 1940 simply because it seems to me a good illustration of the utter mayhem, and what appears flagrant waste of resources, endemic within the RAF, (especially Fighter Command?), in the RAF during WW2. They arrived from CHURCH FENTON in YORKSHIRE on the 11th May and departed for KENLEY in SURREY on the 16th! Some people say this is understandable due to the massive threat the South-East of England was under at that time but surely this smacks of utter incompetence at best by those charged with organising matters. We are now told that resources were strained to breaking point - is it no wonder?
Obviously I would be delighted to learn the reasons why this sort of constant movement of squadrons around the UK made sense but here’s another example I would take issue with. Although the industrial areas around Teeside and Tyneside didn’t bare the brunt of attacks in 1940 surely the whole eastern coast of the UK should I suppose be regarded as being in the frontline? But USWORTH was regarded as a base where crews could ‘rest and recover’. In September 1940 nineteen aircraft from 607 Squadron USWORTH were posted to TANGMERE. Flying back in the opposite direction twelve aircraft from 43 Squadron TANGMERE flew to USWORTH.
How on earth can this be sensible? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to post TANGMERE squadrons to places like ABINGDON, GROVE or HARWELL? Why did the RAF continually post crews well away from the area they could really identified with, away from family and friends? Away from the areas of England they would have identified with and have the greatest natural instinct to defend? To me it doesn’t make any sense either strategically or logistically and certainly seems designed to dampen morale at the very least.
You really cannot compare the situation in WW2 with more recent times in the UK where people now freely and continuously move around. The Army had for centuries totally believed that a fighting unit with common bonds, such as a County regiment, made the most effective fighting force, even when posted abroad. So, why did the RAF vehemently disagree with this policy?
WE WERE NOT ALONE
What surely must be emphasised time and time again is that the indigenous British ‘fighting’ people played a much more smallish part in actually winning WW2 than popular history in the UK would have you believe. Well before the USA government, (and they had another agenda too), decided to join in, a large element of the really cutting edge of our dedicated fighting forces came from many other countries, with sympathetic peoples and/or regimes, especially from Europe, let alone all the Commonwealth countries.
The OTU intake at USWORTH from 1940 to 1942, (along with nearly every other UK airfield in WW2), bears testimony to the truth of this. At USWORTH Officers and NCOs were made up from people coming from America, Australia, Canada, Ceylon, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, New Zealand and Poland. But, it might well be worth considering how many if not most RAF instructors, were trying to train so many people from so many countries and cultures; especially those speaking little if any English. It must have been a nightmare scenario at best and I’m sure you can easily imagine the consequences.
If you agree with my basic premise that the RAF accident record regarding both training and operational flying is abysmal at best, (disregarding enemy action), can we put something fairly hard hitting into the pot working up the paragraph below? Having studied the history and now being perhaps very cynical, I’d prefer to put it like this; wasn’t it really a main point of the RAF in WW2 to kill their pilots and aircrew rather than enemy flyers?
One aspect tending to be 'brushed under the carpet' is that anti-aircraft batteries would invariably fire at any aircraft, as indeed it seems, would many Royal Navy vessels.
This is not to say I think the Luftwaffe did much better, but what an abysmal waste of life. But this is the essential purpose of war - isn’t it? Just look at the records, the RAF and most other air forces just love killing pilots and air-crew almost willy-nilly it seems, even if an active war isn’t taking place. This attitude has of couse been substantially changed in more years.
GLIDING
The early post-war history of Air Cadet gliding at USWORTH has many interesting aspects too. One is the absolute determinationof so many to fly illustrated here. For example initially both cadets and staff, (consisting of unpaid volunteers), brought their own meals with them for weekend training duties before the ‘project’ grew large enough to justify messing. Even then in the first years returns had to made to the Ministry of Food as rationing still applied throughout the UK. It is interesting to note that for a nation that so naively considered itself to have ‘won’ WW2, (and still does?), rationing in Britain didn’t end till 1954 whereas in Germany they’d organised themselves sufficiently to end it in 1948! Even so the glider cadets and staff were utterly dedicated to their task, bless them, and they even flew not just on Bank Holidays but even on Christmas Day if weather permitted.
ANOTHER POST WAR ASPECT
When No.2 Basic Air Navigation School took control of USWORTH in April 1951 Airwork of Cambridge were contracted to employ civilians to maintain and overhaul the aircraft. As could be expected most of these people were ex-RAF. The Anson T.21 was pretty obviously a reliable aircraft and equally obviously the maintenance staff were very capable, as not one instance of either engine or airframe failure seems recorded.
This seems to contrast markedly with Airspeed Oxford history. I happen to have known the late Bill Bailey, (and have had the privilege to have flown with him, and been checked out by him), a renowned pilot who trained on Oxfords in Canada during WW2. He told me; "Those damned aircraft were so unreliable that if an engine didn’t fail on take-off during an important flying test or examination we felt like complaining!”
A NEW ERA BECKONED
In 1962 the Sunderland Corporation purchased USWORTH and reopened it as SUNDERLAND AIRPORT. Generally speaking due to its short runways this was destined to be essentially a GA aerodrome, in other words not a real airport at all. Eventoday many councils hanker after an ‘airport’ to boast about seemingly unable to realise that a thriving GA aerodrome is invariably a valuable civic asset too. This said Mr Ghulam Mohammed was the MD of Tyne Tees Airways based at NEWCASTLE and arranged for a Dakota to undertake pleasure flights on the ‘airport’ Open Day in June 1964. Fares were fifteen shillings, (15/-), for an adult and ten shillings, (10/-), for children.
SUNDERLAND soon became the maintenance base for this ‘airline’ which was really nothing of the sort, being a rather ‘chancy’ ad-hoc charter operator very typical of that period. Although I suppose this must sound like a disparaging description of the company it is not meant to be unkind as such. It was precisely these enterprises, many operating on a ‘shoe-string’ budget, that forged the basis for the charter ‘All-inclusive’ package holiday business and eventually the concept of the “Low-cost”airlines so many appreciate today.
A SPOTTERS PERSPECITIVE
From a aircraft spotters point of view at SUNDERLAND, Tyne Tees Airways operations had much to recommend it. Ranging from a Auster Alpine, DH Dragon Rapide, DH Dove, (including a Riley Dove it seems). Plus the DH Heron to several Dakota variants, and, a Bristol Freighter. Plus a Piper Apache. An impressive fleet for that time and I am surprised it seems largely forgotten.
On a nerdy note it appears that in 1963 Tyne Tees Airways acquired G-AOXI, a Dakota once owned by BEA, (British European Airways), and converted by or for them as one of two Dakotas to be fitted with Rolls Royce Dart turbo-prop engines in or around 1950! Whow! When Tyne Tees took this aeroplane over it reverted to being powered by Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp piston-engine powerplants
MAJOR AIR SHOWS
In 1964 SUNDERLAND held its first Air Day flying display which became an annual event until 1969 involving quite a bit of military involvement. The 1965 ‘show’ featured a Sopwith Pup flying and a Blackburn Beverly in the static display. In 1966 the flying display included a Avro Shackleton and the flying display featured the Red Arrows, (their first year of operation, then flying Folland Gnats). The highlights of the 1968 show must have been the civil P-51D Mustang owned by Charles Masefield and a solo English Electric Lightning. Another airshow was held in 1973 when the flying display featured a Hurricane backed up by a Meteor, Vampire and - a Vulcan! Younger readers might well be wondering why I’ picking up on this, with classic WW2 war-birds being ten a penny at airshows today.
The fact is that even in the south-east at least we had two extremes really, back in the 50s and 60’s, either truly massive displays like FARNBOROUGH or BIGGIN HILL or local displays. At local displays you got to be pretty close to the action in those days and the rare appearance of something like a Spitfire had an enormous effect and appeal. We never even dreamt of ever seeing an Avenger, Corsair, Mustang or Thunderbolt; even in a museum let alone flying! As far as I can recall, we never saw a P.51 Mustang in the south-east of England in that period? But of course, I couldn't attend every air show in our region.
Note: These two pictures from postcards were very kindly sent by Mike Charlton who has an amazing collection. See, www.aviationpostcard.co.uk
A VULCAN ARRIVES
It was on the 21st January 1983 that the largest aircraft to land here arrived, the Vulcan XL319 destined for the museum. It was quite a show too and Sqdn Ldr McDougall gave the crowds a real treat by performing a touch and go before finally landing. But other forces were at work and, perhaps ironically, the Japanese, (NISSAN car factory), moved in to occupy yet another British airfield. It closed forever at 1500 GMT on the 31st May 1984. Departing aircraft generally made low passes or ‘beat ups’ of the airfield. The RAF sent a Jet Provost along which strikes me as hardly being a fitting tribute?
Patricia. jones
This comment was written on: 2019-04-15 09:01:56What is this sites current status, is there a museum, can one visit?
Reply from Dick Flute:
Hi Patricia, There is indeed a museum at Usworth, the North East Aircraft Museum. Best regards, Dick
janet scott
This comment was written on: 2021-04-09 21:08:08I have a photo of a R.A.F Squadron Usworth Co Durham dated 1943. My late Father is in it and I would like to donate it to the correct museum should anyone be interested. Thank you.
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