RAF Scampton

A Messy business at RAF Scampton

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An official recognition of architectural merit and historic significance have combined to proffer a glimmer of hope to many who want to stop one of the Royal Air Force’s most famous stations – now closed – becoming a compound for asylum seekers in rural Lincolnshire.

The Officers Mess at RAF Scampton has been accepted as a Grade II listed building, which means that it, at least, must be preserved.

RAF Scampton was home to No 617 Squadron, famous for the highly risky but successful May 1943 Dambusters raid, night-flying at ultra-low-level deep into industrial Germany. More recently the base – and the Mess – were home to the RAF’s Red Arrows aerobatic team.

The Mess itself is a classically simple Edwin Lutyens design, a template repeated at stations all over the country during the expansion of the RAF in the 1930s. There are many others similar to it. The thing that has motivated the local council’s listing of the building is an appreciation of what happened there.

RAF Scampton Officers Mess, now fenced and boarded up.

In World War 2 Lincolnshire, its low fens wide and flat – perfect for aerodrome construction – was facing Germany across the cold North Sea. This predominantly agricultural county had one of the densest populations of RAF stations anywhere in the nation, so it would be fair to say that the RAF itself is part of its heritage.

Politics muddies these waters, of course. The local council does indeed want RAF Scampton to be given a more “appropriate” use, and has been granted a legal injunction to halt work on the process of converting buildings for asylum-seeker accommodation. Many would prefer to see at least part of the base become a national RAF heritage centre.

Meanwhile the Westminster government, struggling with an embarrassing backlog of asylum seekers to process, needs cheap accommodation for them, and the local press, who know a good story when they see one, cite evidence that the government is ignoring the legal injunction and work is continuing on the base.

RAF Scampton Officers Mess is the building in which 617 Sqn’s commander, Wg Cdr Guy Gibson VC DSO* DFC, and his colleagues slept, ate and drank, celebrated and commiserated. Many took off from Scampton’s runways into Lincolnshire’s huge skies. Far fewer returned to land. From the 19 Avro Lancasters on the Dambusters mission, eight did not return, 53 crew were killed and three taken prisoner.

Grade II listed status does not prevent a building being used for other purposes, but it lays on the owner a duty to preserve its fabric and respect its historic purpose. It would make a difference if the government at Westminster provided some indication that it cares one way or another, but there isn’t any such evidence right now.

It will be interesting to see, at a time when the incumbent Conservative government is casting around desperately for disappearing votes, whether it heeds local sentiment, or hardens its planned cheap accommodation objective. The official opposition party, the Labour Party, is on the Scampton political bandwagon, promising a reversal of the Conservative decision if it wins power next year, even if the base is, by then, housing asylum seekers.

Quite an audience for the Reds

David Learmount Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , ,

During the 2015 display season an estimated 42 million people watched the RAF Red Arrows flying their routine.

On 17 December, having finished a day’s training, they took a break for Christmas. But not before the pilots – and the heads of the Reds’ engineering and administrative teams – made their traditional visit that evening to the City of London for the 39th  “Boycie’s Annual Reception”.

Courtesy of David Boyce, a City man and long time Red Arrows devotee, each year the Reds meet the heads of Britain’s trading and financial community at the ancient Charterhouse.

It’s a well-attended social gathering where wealth-creation meets the highest expression of the military expertise that ensures the City enjoys the peace and stability to trade; and maybe also the ground in which the seeds of corporate sponsorship are sewn, potentially boosting the Reds’ ability to market their shows.

According to tradition Red 1 – currently Sqn Ldr David Montenegro – addressed the gathering, summarising the season’s achievements and looking ahead to the next.

Increasingly, it seems, the UK is deploying the Reds as one of its most powerful international marketing weapons, furthering its push to curry favour with growing economic powers like India.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his early November state visit to the UK, was being entertained at 10 Downing Street, Modi was honoured with a flypast, the Reds streaming the Indian colours instead of the UK’s red, white and blue.

The Indian air force happens to be putting in a new order for 20 more of the Hawk trainers that the Reds fly, except they’ll be the latest marque rather than the nearly 40y-old machines the team use.

Montenegro, in an intriguing aside, told us how hard the team’s engineers had to work to get the dark green and saffron smoke colours of India’s flag right, because on the first trial run they were embarrassingly off-colour.

Next year in early November the Reds are booked to display – for the first time – at Zhuhai for China’s biennial air show, so they have plenty of time to get the mixture right for the red and yellow smoke that will salute this globally prized trading partner.

To be ready for the 2016 display season, however, the Reds have to go through their winter work-up period, which began in October at their Scampton, Lincolnshire base when the 2015 season ended. This prepares the team as a whole – including three new pilots – for the exacting routines designed to dazzle the watching crowds.

After their Christmas and New Year holiday the Reds return to Scampton for more hard work until March, wearing their normal RAF dark green flying suits. Then in April – under normal circumstances – they move to the more reliable weather at RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus to complete the work-up.

This year, however, Akrotiri is so busy supporting live RAF operations over Syria and Iraq that the Reds are going to use the Hellenic air force base at Tanagra, southern Greece. Here they begin practising the full, nine-ship routines they have been working up to. Every session is filmed for debrief.

If they get it right, by May they will be judged ready, and allowed to don their red flying overalls for the first time in the year. They are ready for a season that will include 90 displays in the UK and all over the world.

Plus the transit flying from Scampton to each display site. When it’s China, that takes some time.