RAF Wroughton, history by David Craig.
The Flying Museum
The
aerodrome was opened here at Wroughton high on the ridge overlooking the
Vale of the White Horse in 1940.
It was never planned to be an operational
airfield flying squadrons of bombers or fighters on missions against the
Luftwaffe. Rather, it was the base for No.15 Maintenance Unit.
The opening of the aerodrome had a profound effect on the village even before it was
built.
On 16th May, 1939 two village brothers, Edward and Arthur were told by the Labour
Exchange to report to the top of
Priors Hill ("a hill and a half", according to my informant*) to meet a surveyor.
Edward was sent back down into the village to get a bag of cement powder.
Meanwhile, Arthur "borrowed" a spade from a nearby barn. He uprooted fence-posts
and used the spade to fill in a ditch so that the surveyor could drive his black Standard
8 into the field.
There, Arthur and Edward (who had now returned) set one of the fence-posts into the
ground at a spot indicated by the surveyor using grit from the road and water from
the ditch to give a solid base (Edward hadn't yet arrived back with the cement powder).
Then the surveyor backed his car up against this post its nose pointing towards
Southrop. Then he drove the car one mile in a straight line, with Arthur and Edward
removing hedges and ditches as they went. Here they erected the second post. These
posts marked the ends of the main runway, and from these markers, the whole of the
site was laid out including all the runways and Princess Alexandra's Hospital.
*Bill Clark, who told me all of this, still has that spade head in his garage. Arthur was
his father.
Planes came here from factories all over Britain, to have their weapons and
equipment fitted, before delivery to their operational units. Later, they might
come back for repair if there was enough left to fix. The pilots who flew in
and out of Wroughton were largely civilian auxiliaries (many of them
women). During those years of war, Wroughton handled 62 different types of
aircraft.
When the war was over, most of the remaining operational aircraft made their
way back to Wroughton, where they were broken up surplus to requirements.
(Much later, there was cause for satisfaction when one of the few airworthy
Lancaster bombers flew out of here, having been reassembled from bits
originally hacked off during this post-war period.)
After the war, Wroughton continued its maintenance function - with
increasingly sophisticated aircraft. In the 1960s it began to specialise in
servicing helicopters.
In 1972, the RAF left, and the Navy took over largely because the RN took
over responsibility for servicing all military helicopters. This continued until
Wroughton closed (as a military airfield) in 1978.
All over England, there were wartime airfields which gradually fell out of use.
Some of them disappeared altogether built over with housing or trading
estates or absorbed into neighbouring towns. Some of them became race
tracks - officially or otherwise.
The Cold War kept many of them in (potential) business until the end of the
80s, when a new round of re-assessment began.
The timing of Wroughton's closure was crucial. In the mid-70s, the Science
Museum had been seeking storage space for its expanding stock of exhibits.
They had a particular desire to keep examples of commercial aircraft - a bit
difficult to keep in their South Kensington headquarters, especially as the
speed of aircraft development created an increasingly large fleet of obsolete
(but interesting) models which deserved preservation.
Within a year of the Navy's departure, the Science Museum flew in.
Specifically, the first craft were a Douglas DC-3 ("Dakota") and a De
Havilland Comet (the first jet airliner). More and more aircraft followed.
...including the rather wonderful Handley Page "Gugnunc" of 1929 (named after a
catchphrase in a Daily Mirror cartoon), which was capable of flying safely at 35 mph
or less, and could take off from a 300 foot runway (i.e., it could take off from a football
pitch).
One intrepid pilot started his flight run within the hangar, and was airborne by the time
he reached the doorway.
In addition, the Science Museum uses Wroughton's cavernous hangars to store
large exhibits in "rotation" from its London HQ and elsewhere. There are also
boxes and boxes of material which must be kept, but which aren't particularly
interesting at the moment.
Wroughton is not open to the public - except on certain Open Days, or by
special arrangement. School parties get in free.
From The Flying Museum by Davis Graig
Back to RAF Wroughton MENU page
David Craig.
Handle Page Gugnunc in the Science Museum.
© 2013 Richard Drew