The 'Introduce yourself' Thread

Welcome to AiX COLLINE

There were a number of WW2 military airfields within a radius of 20 miles of Stourbridge but lots more to the northwest in Shropshire.

HALFPENNY GREEN
PERTON
ELMDON
COSFORD
WOLVERHAMPTON
CASTLE BROMWICH
PENKRIDGE

and others. If you use the Search function on the forum you can find information on all these

What are your specific interests?

Welcome to AiX Boneshaker. Your research into the 'Home Guard' in your area is specialised and will be useful to expanding knowledge of our AiX members. We seem to cover it all!

Another one from Lincolnshire here. Welcome to the forum. Have you seen the www.RAF-Lincolnshire.info website. I was surprised just how many units there were in the county.

Hi Mary and welcome to the forum.
I cant help you about the wrens quarters but I was stationed at Brawdy 1977-80.
There is a facebook page for RAF Brawdy with quite a few members,if you not a facebook member then I can ask for you.
Where were the wren qtrs/wardroom ?

rgds baz

I am trying to research my father's war history - now he is dead i keep finding all sorts of questions that I dont know the answer to. I am hoping someone here can help me with one of them.
I know he was based as an instrument tech at Desborough as we were evacuated to Rothwell. And I remember him talking of the 1000 bommer raid when they took all the training aircraft and he had to try to get them all working before they left which i gather was a problem as some were old. I am trying to find out what squadron was based there that would have gone on this raid.
Also, I keep finding ref to a USA nbase there and not an RAF base.
If anyone could enlighten me and give me coordinates for the site of the base I would be grateful.
Ian

Hello all. Like it say's on the tin! I am from Swansea and I have a great passion for Local Military aviation History. Spend a lot of time down the Local Range at Pembrey and have a big colloction of photo's of aircraft on the range over last 3-4 years. Also starting to research the history of my Local airfield fairwood common. A dad of 2 girls and 3 boys and a granfather of a gorgeous granddaughter...and I work full time (thank god!!) as a duty Manager on the platforms of Sunny Swansea railway station. Cheers

Hi Ian

Welcome to the forum.

What was your fathers name I can have look through the ORB for Desborough & see if he is mentioned, Desborough was home to 84 OTU part of 92 Group Bomber command, it was a training unit flying mostly Wellington X aircraft & they also had Miles Martinets for target towing.
Desborough was intened for use by The USAAF but the option wqas never taken up & the RAF moved in, the satellite station at Harrington was however taken over by the Americans, making Desborough no longer a full OTU station.

I have all the sites plans & can send them to you incuding my redraw which is clearer, the airfield is here wtp2.appspot.com/wheresthepath.htm?lat=5...4141&gz=14&oz=8>=1 don't hesitate to ask anymore questions.

Chris

Welcome also from me Ian. I don't know how up you are on the acronyms, but just to add to Chris's post OTU is operational training unit. They weren't a squadron in the normal sense and would have used "cast off" aircraft hence the problems your father reported.

By the way if you are ever passing Desborough way there are a few of us around here that would love to show you around what is left of the old station.

Yes we are always up for a walk around the peritrack it's like a magnet to stevie
PM me your email address & I can send you some stuff.

BTW my avatar is a Desborough Wellington.

Chris

Hi, I'm John Woods and as I have said in a message on the Kiplin Hall thread, I've lurked on this group for a while. My interest is military and MoS depots, factories and other non-operational sites in the UK during the War. I have traced about 2,500 sites of all types and the list runs to 1.5MB or over 300 pages.

I have been collecting these sites for over ten years, initially to identify those which were rail served, but I traced so many it seemed sensible to list them all, then sort out the rail served sites later.

The list is, at present unedited, as I am still finding material, but I hope that at some time I can put it up on the internet where it would be available at all.

If anyone would like a copy of the list, please contact me on isambard6(at)ntlworld.com (replace ‘at’ with symbol). I would be grateful for any additions or corrections, which would be given full acknowledgement.

John Woods