Colerne Airfield

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Colerne Airfield
RAF Colerne.JPG
Characteristics
ICAO code EGUO
Coordinates

51 ° 26 ′ 21 ″  N , 2 ° 17 ′ 11 ″  W Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 21 ″  N , 2 ° 17 ′ 11 ″  W
Height above MSL 181 m (594  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 10 km west of Chippenham
Street 5 km to the A4
Basic data
opening 1940
operator British Army
Runways
01/19 1095 m × 45 m asphalt
07/25 1664 m × 46 m asphalt

i1 i3 i5

i7 i10 i12 i14

The Colerne Airfield is a military airfield of the British Army in Colerne in southern England Wiltshire , between Chippenham and Bath . The base was formerly a base of the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The army has not stationed any aircraft here; the area houses, among other things, a ground station for the Skynet 5 satellites and a regiment of the Royal Corps of Signals . The aviation use is carried out today in particular by the 3rd Air Experience Flight and the Bristol University Air Squadron , both units for training young people of the RAF, the latter is comparable in the broadest sense to a German Akaflieg . You are flying the Grob G 115 .

In September 2016, the British Ministry of Defense announced that it would give up the site. Living space is to be created here later.

history

RAF Colerne

The former Royal Air Force Station , RAF Colerne for short , was used for aviation by the RAF between autumn 1940 and 1976.

From October 1940 during the Battle of Britain , the base was still under construction at that time, RAF Colerne served, initially as a satellite station for RAF Middle Wallop, as a base for interceptors to protect nearby Bristol . A large number of squadrons "rotated" through Colerne in succession until June 1941. From this point on, the squadrons were stationed in Colerne for longer periods of time. This also included the 616th Squadron , the first British jet fighter squadron to deploy the Meteor , for a month and a half at the beginning of 1945 .

After the war, Colerne came to Maintenance Command for six years in 1946 and housed maintenance units until February 1962. In 1952, however, the station was again subordinated to the Fighter Command and was simultaneously home to the 238th Operational Conversion Unit , a retraining unit for night fighter crews, for five years .

Hastings C. 2, 24th Squadron, Colerne, 1967

RAF Colerne was still under the RAF Fighter Command until 1957 and in 1957 became the RAF Air Support Command's second transport air base in Wiltshire alongside RAF Lyneham . It was initially home to two Hastings seasons .

After the Hastings was decommissioned and the C-130K Hercules C.1 came in , Colerne housed the maintenance center of the C-130 fleet between 1967 and 1976, one of which crashed in Colerne in September 1973.

In addition, one of the RAF collections of historic aircraft was located in RAF Colerne until its closure. This included the Me-163 exhibited in Gatow today .

Colerne Airfield

After the RAF withdrew, the British Army took over the airfield and has since referred to it as Colerne Airfield and the barracks area as Azimghur Barracks .

Web links

Commons : Colerne Airfield  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This is Wiltshire, September 9, 2016
  2. ↑ RAF Colerne, rafweb.org, accessed on September 10, 2016
  3. ^ C-130 Events from 1973, C-130.net, accessed September 10, 2016
  4. ↑ Me 163B 191904 (Colerne, St Athan, Oldenburg, Berlin), from Phil Butler's "War Prizes", accessed on September 10, 2016
  5. ^ Colerne, American Air Museum in Britain website of the Imperial War Museum, accessed September 10, 2016