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Return to Shawbury (by Chris Smith)

After taking the tour of RAF Shawbury two years ago almost to the day, I knew it wouldn't be long before I was back, although I wasn't expecting it to be quite so soon! When a post appeared on Northern Spotters group advertising eight places that had become available on a tour that was to take place just a couple of days later, being on a week off work allowed me to jump at the opportunity!

I was very curious as to how much had changed - some people thought it may be as much as 90% of the aircraft stored there, but my own estimation was closer to 50%, in actual fact, it was probably about 20%!

I've done quite a bit of spotting in the last two-three weeks courtesy of North East Airport Movements (NEAM) group to Edinburgh, Manchester and Gatwick and I didn't want to flood the website with all these trip reports in such a short space of time, besides, they were posted to the group anyway. To get to the point, money was running tight from all these prior trips - then there was the DTVM Spring Meet the day after this, so I chose not to book a Travelodge and I drove down the morning of the tour - big mistake! I had a little too much to drink on the train on the way back from Gatwick the day before so for starters I was driving with a hangover, secondly, when I set off the Sat Nav was showing a 0912 arrival (tour started at 0930), but by the time I reached half way there, a mixture of traffic / accidents / road works had lost me that 20 minute advantage. I spent the rest of the journey getting annoyed as I kept losing more time, then clawing some back, then losing it again, then clawing it back again - I must have done this at least three times! I'd started planning my diversion airfields when I finally made it with seconds to spare after having broken every rule of the road!

The tour played out virtually identical to the previous one in terms of which hangars we went in and in what order etc, with the exception of Hangar 2 which was empty and out of bounds due to the floor being replaced. That wasn't the only similarity with the previous trip either, as I recognised regular website contributor Stephen Dobson and had a good chat with him about different things!

Among interesting things learned from the various RAF personnel were that people from RAF Coningsby had recently visited to measure up the hangars / HAS sites to store some Typhoon's before changing their minds at the last minute to avoid being crucified (and rightly so!) by the media - so now they're, ahem, "under maintenance", at Coningsby instead. A large number of the Gazelle's that were here were bought for an eight-figure sum but the winning bidder didn't view the airframes until after they'd won - I think they started to regret it once they did see the state some of them were in!! The three stored Merlin helicopters have been modified / molested so much that they are no longer economically serviceable.

Thanks for reading if you got this far - two years is probably the minimal amount of time to leave between tours, anything less wouldn't be worth it. I've put a * next to airframes that were here last time I visited (although I suspect some have seen active service in-between).

RAF Shawbury - 29/03/2012

Aircraft out enjoying the sunshine

Storage Hangars / HAS

(in the order we went in)

Hangar 14

Hangar 13

Hangar 10

Hangar 11

Hangar 17

Hangar 18

Active Hangars

(in the order we went in)

Hangar 04

Hangar 03 (Engineering & Maintenance)

The wreckage of AS50 ZJ259/59 was outside the hangar on a trailer under tarpaulin.

Hangar 01 (Museum)

The Dakota was parked outside of the Hangar.

All Griffin HT1 / Squirrel HT1 are operated by FB Heliservices under contract to the Defence Helicopter Flying School (DHFS). Interestingly, FB Heliservices is a joint venture between Bristow Helicopters Ltd and our very own Cobham Aviation Services.

Photos can be found here.

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