Friday, March 15, 2019

On Her Majesty's Secret Airfield


A project is like a child... there's no such thing as time out.

With a view to the 'promo vid' and the assistance of Google Maps I eventually gain access to the old airfield at Burscough, and that's the Suzuki jeep you can see lining up on what would have been runway '215' as it appears on the chart ~ and the last remaining hard-standing.

Being a naval base it was known as HMS Ringtail and featured four runways instead of the RAF's three, and each of them rather narrower at thirty yards, the reason being that it would accommodate aircraft designed for the perilous pursuit of landing on aircraft carriers.

It hosted a Seafire squadron during the war: the sea-going version of the celebrated Spitfire.

One of my older flying students had in fact served on carriers in WW2 and suggested that the type was not at all suited to carrier landings, without the wide stance and rugged legs of American radial-engined aircraft designed specifically for the task.

The prevailing winds hereabouts are Southwesterly and there was a certain nostalgia for my own mis-spent youth on military airfields, and for those many pilots who would have lined up here time and again enroute to some or other theatre of war.