RAF V-Bomber Bases in the UK

kev123;120657 wrote:

Could be a daft answer here, my dad lived in the small village of Burtonwood as a boy and tells me that the bombers always took off in the direction of Liverpool he used to watch them when they visited.

Thanks

It's as John says earlier, but worth noting that the V Bomber readiness platforms were situated at one end of the runway only, ie at the instrument/prevailing wind end, so were essentially set up to take off that way.

REF, Prestwick has always been very important to the military, it's geographical position and runways (one at 9,500ft) make it so, in fact if you look on GE the first thing you will notice is three Galaxys parked on the runways.
When you see all these dispersed airfields listed, and see how close some are to each other (certainly by Vulcan!) you can appreciate how seriously this deterence was taken.

I have heard it that St Athan, which was the mainainance station for the V Bombers of course, was considered as an emergency dispersed airfield and that is one of the reasons that decent runway lighting was fitted in the late 1950s - has anyone else come across this?

To muddy the water, Pershore has the dispersal near the southern end of the main, as shown in Post#6, and also a large ORP at the north. How many others were like this?

MM's mention of the long runway at Prestwick reminds me of the day I was attending a meeting there with BAE Systems.

As we sat at the meeting, outside on the runway a Polar 747 freighter thundered past, firmly planted on its wheel and with no sign whatsoever of the nose lifting for rotation. All of the BAE people at the meeting immediately sprang from their chairs and rushed to the window to watch as the 74 just cleared the vehicles passing innocently by on the road, before slowly climbing away to the north-west. Everyone present judged that to have been the hairyest-ever take-off they had seen.

The same book as mentioned above also has a drawing of Carnaby's ORPs.

Here's my version of it, much the same as Manston although 4 instead of 2.



I think Bruntingthorpe and Stansted most likely used the Y shaped dispersals at those airfields, they would have been more than big enough to take the V force aircraft.

I have a few PDFs I downloaded a while ago off the tinternet which have some black and white aerial images of Stansted. One is taken 5th August 1965 of what would now be the area around Rwy23 and there are no signs of any ORPs. There's another 3 dated 16th August 1961, 12th Oct 1964 and 14th Oct 1968 of what is now the area around Rwy05 and again no sign of any ORP's but there were 11 Y Shaped dispersals which look freshly built in the 1961 image.....of course there is the possibility that even though airfields were assigned as dispersal airfields they where never actually used or time simply ran out before the ORPs where built????

On page 26 of the Cold War book is an aerial picture of Pershore dated July 1961, it has runway/taxiway upgrades and the V-force medium bomber dispersal to the south west, but the ORP at the north end of the runway was not built. It looks like there was a turn around area at the southern end of the runway.

Carnaby;120712 wrote:

To muddy the water, Pershore has the dispersal near the southern end of the main, as shown in Post#6, and also a large ORP at the north. How many others were like this?

Middleton St George had both Medium Bomber Dispersal (MB Dispersal as its called on the 1963 site plan) and ORP for 2 aircraft. Id assume this meant that the airfield could stable 4 aircraft on the dispersal (in the event of the main bases becoming none operational) and 2 aircraft armed and ready to go on the ORP. Leconfield, Bedford, Cranwell, Pershore, Lossiemouth, Lyneham, Yeovilton and Leeming had both ORP and MB Dispersal.

I think Ballykelly, Burtonwood, Kinloss, St Mawgan, Brawdy, Coltishall, Elvington, Leuchars, Machrihanish, Manston, Llandebr, Valley, Wattisham and Carnaby only had ORPs

Boscombe Down, Filton, Tarrant Rushton and Shawbury only seemed to have MB Dispersals.

Bruntingthorpe, Prestwick, Stansted, Aldergrove and Kemble dont seem to have the standard arrangment.

This is only from my own observation on Google Earth and Oldmaps.co.uk so mave have missed some or they have been removed or built over.

Stevo, as per my post #14, Mawgan had a four aircraft parking area (for RS15) and the two ORPs (for RS5 & 2).
I take it that it would only be a maximum of four aircraft dispersed, ie not four on the dispersals plus two on the ORPs.

Yeah of course....in my last post I meant in the sense of the particular style of MB Dispersal, as at MSG, Pershore, etc. the four parking areas at St Mawgan are, in comparison, none standard to the other type of MB Dispersal, but the ORPs at Mawgan are similar to other airfields such as Bedford and Elvington, if ya know what I mean..lol.

i guess you'd have to work out how many operational v force aircraft they where and see if the amount of space at the dispersal airfields would match up?? I saw a few pics of Leeming a while back and there was five Vulcans parked on the MB dispersal, 4 parked normally and one on the loop don't remember what year they might have been.

I see yes, the Mawgan ones were the original spectacle loops adapted for use.
Interesting that you mention numbers of aircraft, I've often wondered how many would actually be servicable and able to be armed, and how the dispersed airfields would be choosen?

I am assuming that aircraft were dispersed already carrying their weapons? Did the dispersed sites have SSA capability?