The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

Thanks to you all for the friendly welcome. I have many childhood memories of the wartime military remains around Wigtownshire. I learned to drive on part of the old Castle Kennedy airfield and spent a great three months working at West Freugh in the summer of 1986 when I was a student. I also remember occasionally helping launch my dad's boat from one of the old flying-boat slips at Wig Bay. Then there was the gunnery target wall and bombing target factory up on Braid Fell, and all the naval and port installations at Cairnryan..... Some good memories but oh how I wish I'd had a camera back then. As for the food all I can say is the pies were always much better in Stranraer than Dumfries !

Not withstanding all the above I actually prefer living in Norfolk !

PNK;82247 wrote:

Not sure why Carnaby didn't like Dumfries.

NP and I had a choice of takeaway Chinese, takeaway Indian or Fish'n'chips. Little Chef proved idyllic.

Welcome to AiX Shadow1,

Amongst you photo collection you are bound to have some airfields in the background so if you can find anything old and interesting I should like to see it.

We seem to have a lot of Norfolk resident members but only a few within Scotland.

Carnaby and NP infiltrated the Scottish Border in disguise (the kilts were badly fitting) but when Carnaby asked a local for directions to CUR-KUD-BRITE they were unmasked:)

Hi Cliff,

I've been trying to find out for some time what happened to the Rebel Air Museum.

I flew into Earls Colne a good few years back and discovered that the Museum was there, but sadly closed at the time of our visit. I was interested as my father’s youngest brother, sadly no longer with us, was a navigator in 39 squadron (RAF) and was one of the few Brits to have served in B26 Marauders. They had previously been equipped with Beaufighters in anti shipping ops it Mediterranean but re-equipped with the Marauders flying tactical bombing missions over Yugoslavia in support of Tito’s forces there. A squadron song mocks their successes by noting the amount of “ploughing” they did by missing the target and hitting fields

Some years later I phoned the airfield to find out if the Museum was still there and was told that it had folded when its founder had passed away? I often wondered what happened to all the exhibits? In particular I believe there was a nose section of a B26? Now a very rare bird since one of the few preserved examples crashed a few years ago.

Any info much welcomed. Sorry I missed it whilst it was there.

Geoff

Hi Cliff, Welcome to the forum. Like you I also prefer the earlier aircraft, not really a jet lover though I do like the Vulcan. Also all my cars over the many years have spent a lot of time driving on whichever old airfields we could get onto. The airfields of the Eighth and Ninth Air Force are also favorites of mine. No trip home from East Anglia is complete without a visit to the 355th FG memorial Nr Steeple Morden, all my cars seem to find their own way there, any season any time of day or night !! Called at the Rebel Air Museum many years ago....closed.

Found through Google what happened to the Marauder section! www.boxted2011.co.uk/museum.html

sadly the "wrong end" for my Uncle as a navigator ....unless they had "the can" in the tail?

Still wonder what else I missed? Flew in on 27/10/94 according to my log book. It was a big building as I recall compared to Boxted's two Nissan Huts? The Sports leisure Centre at the site next to the Airfield had dozens of excellent paintings of WWII ops mainly USAAF as I recall. Did an excellent coffee too!

Geoff

I've been hovering around this forum for a month or so now, so thought it was about time I introduced myself.
My main interest in Pillboxes, being a member of the Pillbox Study Group, which is how I tripped over this Forum.
That said I have a general interest in military history and a love of aviation. I live within half a mile of the end of whats left of the runway at RAF Stanton Harcourt. No posts for there yet?

I started my working career at British Aerospace (Vickers) at Brooklands.
I worked on the VC10 tanker conversion when I was an apprentice in the summer of 1981. So I am somewhat sad to see the posts on Bruntingthorpe of the scrapping.
There is still plenty of VC10 flying from Brize though, which is 5 miles to the west of me.

This is a great source of information and it is easy to get distracted with the information here and loose an hour...

Regards

Stuart

Welcome to the forum Stuart.
I'm sure Stanton Harcourt gets a mention, possibly in a members website. But that does not stop you from starting the thread off here under the right category as you are so close!.....and we want pictures:)

Welcome to the forum Stuart.

PNK does Mrs PNK put up with this random rambling yours