A Cumbrian day out
18 November 2014
RAF Spadeadam
The main purpose of the
day was to visit the Royal Air Force’s electronic warfare range
set high in the remote Pennine Mountains some 20 miles east of
Carlisle and very close to the aptly named hamlet of Moscow .
The range covers some 9,600 acres of moor , mire and woodland
and has been used as a military training range since 1972 ,
first by the Army and then from 1976 by the Royal Air Force who
later ran a joint operation with the United States until they
withdrew in 1996 .
The land is actually
owned by Lord Carlisle who leased it to the Ministry Of Defence
for 999 years in 1955 for use as a rocket testing site for the
Blue Streak Project , a multi-stage rocket developed jointly by
De Havilland and Rolls Royce and which was envisaged would
become Britain’s main medium range ballistic missile nuclear
weapon delivery system . As the project progressed and the
Spadeadam site was developed the project costs rocketed skywards
much more than Blue Streak itself until finally in 1960 the
project was cancelled . Although the military project was
cancelled there was a reluctance to cancel the project
altogether due to the huge financial investment to date and a
new civilian use was found for Blue Streak as a satellite
launcher first for the Black Prince a wholly British project
which again proved too expensive and yes , was cancelled before
the final throw of the face saving dice as Blue Streak was used
as a launch vehicle within the European Launcher Development
Organisation which operated from Woomera in Australia but beset
by technical difficulties that too was cancelled in 1972 .
The Spadeadam site has
three distinct separate
Cold War areas in Prior Lancy which was the engine test area
used by Rolls Royce and Greymare Hill the main rocket test site
with it’s two huge concrete test firing pads. All of the live
tests were completed on the east stand as the west stand was
never fully completed before the project was cancelled . Third
area is the office and workshop area centered around the huge F1
Hangar where the rocket sections were re-assembled after being
transported to site by road . The office annexe to the hangar
was the original project office and is now in use as the station
headquarters .
The modern day Spadeadam
is embodied in the Wiley Sike air weapons range , the Colinski
dummy airfield complete with T-33 and Mystere decoy aircraft and
a single ex-German Air Force Su-22
Fitter . The Berry
Hill main operations site were the business end of the
electronic warfare range is controlled from is home to the
Operations Squadron which is responsible for both range and air
traffic control and close by is the recently completed
H7-Complex which is a new helicopter operating
area with a huge block-paved landing pad and bulk fuel
installation and is designed to accommodate 7 Puma or 5 Chinook
or 5 Apache helicopters .
The huge F1 Hangar is
used by the station engineering and support units as a store , a
maintenance workshop and also to manufacture dummy equipment
which may be required out on the range . Also in this technical
site area is the station medical centre , fire station and the
all ranks mess . This last building is the only original
Blue Streak building
which was not given English Heritage Grade II listed building
status and is soon to be replaced by a new all ranks mess and
SLAM accommodation block which are currently under construction
. Another recent addition has been a bio-mass boiler which was
commissioned in 2012 and now supplies 95% of the stations
heating .
Lying within sight of
it’s F1 hangar is a single section of a Blue Streak rocket , a
first stage booster section some sixty feet in length and six
tons in weight . It lies in a carrying frame which was built
on-site and is contemporary both in use and construction and
which stayed with it’s individual booster section once it was
paired up . It also makes an ideal backdrop for a visiting group
photograph !
A typical RAF Spadeadam
visit is of a three to four hour duration beginning with a meet
and greet alongside the Blue Streak booster section before
moving inside the SHQ for a more formal welcome and introduction
to the station . This is in-dispersed with some superb
illustrations of the rise and fall of the
Blue Streak project ,
what RAF Spadeadam does now and how it does it and how it
accomplishes it’s role of maintaining it vast natural
environment alongside an active air and ground warfare range .
The visit then moves outside and takes a minibus tour of the
Cold War structures at Prior Lancy and Greymare Hill , health
and safety restrictions apply ! , and then onto Berry Hill
taking in several pieces of typical eastern bloc and Soviet
radar and SAM hardware , some hidden and not so well hidden and
some real and some not so real ! Inside the ops centre you are
given an overview of the range , the equipment available to the
range controller and the various scenarios they can ‘put up’
against any incoming aircraft depending on their tasking and
time on the range which is allocated typically in thirty minute
slots comprising of three ten minute differing scenario sessions
.
After leaving Berry Hill
it’s back to the booster rocket for a group photograph or
alongside the SAM SA-8 by the main gate before departing and
heading back towards Moscow ! Details of visits to RAF Spadeadam
can be found on the station website homepage as can more details
on the Blue Streak
project , the history of the site and it’s present day
operations .
With grateful thanks to
Wing Commander Matt Lawrence the then Station Commander of
RAF Spadeadam and to all
his staff for a superb and informative base visit .
Carlisle
Airport
With some useful
daylight still remaining we then drove west to Carlisle Airport
, home to the Solway Aviation Museum on a pre-arranged visit
with thanks to their chairman Dougie Kerr and our good fortune
to choose a day when a museum working party was present . We
spent an hour or so looking around the outside exhibits and the
museum workshop which had several airframes in varying states of
restoration . The main museum exhibition building was closed but
the following airframes were noted ;
On display outside
were ;
G-ARPP
DH121 Trident Srs1
cockpit only
WE188
Canberra T4
WP314/CU/573
Sea Prince T1
WS832
Meteor NF14
WV198/K
Whirlwind HAS22
WZ515
Vampire T11
XJ823
Vulcan B2
XS209
Jet Provost T4
no serial on airframe
XV406/CK
Phantom FGR2
ZF583
Lightning F53
Hunter F51
really E-425 , no serial on airframe , pseudo
ETPS c/s
G-APLG
Auster J5L Aiglet
dismantled
G-BDTT
Bede BD-5
ditto , PFA14-10084
G-BNNR
Cessna 152
ditto , being repainted , ex-Carlisle hvy landing
G-BRHL
M-B B8M
stored ,
ex-Kirkbride , PTF exp 26-8-2003
WB584
Chipmunk T10
dismantled
WZ792
Grasshopper TX1
wings only and stored in ceiling
Notes ;
Not seen but known to be
on display in the main museum are Grasshopper TX1 WZ784 and
HM.14 Flea
G-ADRX .
Nimrod AEW3 XV259 has
been sold to a private owner in Wales .
The whereabouts of
Chipmunk T10 WB670 PAX is unknown .
There is also a section
from the propulsion bay of a Blue Streak rocket on display
outside plus a superb internal display of the project which was
originally at Spadeadam itself .
As the museum is on the
northern edge of the airport , noted on the ground parked
amongst the airport hangars were ;
G-BLHJ
F172P Skyhawk
G-BNOM
PA-28 Cherokee Warrior II
G-CHER
PA-38-112 Tomahawk
G-EJRS
PA-28-161 Cadet
G-JETO
C550 Citation II
G-OMEX
Zenair CH 701UL
parked behind
the hangars !
G-RNCH
PA-28-181 Cherokee Archer II
Credits
Thanks to Dougie Kerr ,
Duncan Turner and all the working party volunteers at the
Solway Aviation Museum .
DET
1 December 2014
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