*Pic heavy*
Massive thanks to TBM for organising this tour of the airfield side of Upper Heyford, on which me and Treadstone and a non-member tagged along.
We were shown around by an ex-maintenance worker, who has worked on-site for 35 years and so we got a huge history lesson as well - I for one didn't realise that Upper Heyford was the blueprint for every other RAF airfield in the UK, or that there is a plane named after it - the only plane ever named after an airfield. We saw pretty much everything there is to see from the monolithic Avionics building half-buried in the ground, to the dozens of hangars, the jet engine test bay, the ammo/weapons storage bunkers, and of course the jewel in it's crown the Chemical/Biological weapons control centre bunker which was absolutely amazing.
Avionics:
General hangars:
The hangars are either closed up or being used to store stuff as varied as bales of hay, farm machinery, cars, personal/private documents and grit for the roads. This one was full of grit and a tractor
Then this was a great surprise, asking what the odd-shaped building was behind some of the hangars I received a reply of 'That's where they used to test jet engines', so at that point I got fairly excited!
We then moved onto the weapons storage facility, the compound is triple-fenced with coils of barbed wire across the top of each, a watchtower where an armed guard would be 24/7, a reinforced guard building that looks more like a giant pillbox and, at one stage, a gun turret above the main entrance.
Ammo store designed to look like an office block, behind the windows is concrete and inside is nothing more than a reinforced concrete shell.
CB Control Centre in next post...
Massive thanks to TBM for organising this tour of the airfield side of Upper Heyford, on which me and Treadstone and a non-member tagged along.
We were shown around by an ex-maintenance worker, who has worked on-site for 35 years and so we got a huge history lesson as well - I for one didn't realise that Upper Heyford was the blueprint for every other RAF airfield in the UK, or that there is a plane named after it - the only plane ever named after an airfield. We saw pretty much everything there is to see from the monolithic Avionics building half-buried in the ground, to the dozens of hangars, the jet engine test bay, the ammo/weapons storage bunkers, and of course the jewel in it's crown the Chemical/Biological weapons control centre bunker which was absolutely amazing.
Avionics:
General hangars:
The hangars are either closed up or being used to store stuff as varied as bales of hay, farm machinery, cars, personal/private documents and grit for the roads. This one was full of grit and a tractor
Then this was a great surprise, asking what the odd-shaped building was behind some of the hangars I received a reply of 'That's where they used to test jet engines', so at that point I got fairly excited!
We then moved onto the weapons storage facility, the compound is triple-fenced with coils of barbed wire across the top of each, a watchtower where an armed guard would be 24/7, a reinforced guard building that looks more like a giant pillbox and, at one stage, a gun turret above the main entrance.
Ammo store designed to look like an office block, behind the windows is concrete and inside is nothing more than a reinforced concrete shell.
CB Control Centre in next post...