Originally Posted by
chevvron
A ground party with a similar car was detached daily to RAE Bedford who had an agreement with Alconbury to be their 'COB' or' Combined Operating Base' but I didn't say that 'cos in never happened.
Come to think of it, didn't the first U2 to land in the UK land at Bedford?
Being stationed at RAE Bedford (NATS provided the ATC for the MoD) from 1987-1991, the ground party and high speed car only ever came on base once when a TR-1 as they were known then did divert in and stayed overnight.
In fact what occurred during the training flights often having 2-3 in the circuit at a time ,was the 5.0-litre Mustangs chase cars would sit in a layby on the road between RAF Alconbury and RAE Bedford listen to ATC frequency as they only did go arounds so never needed the cars for the final talkdown.
Bedford was earmarked at one point as being a master diversion for Alconbury for crosswind diversion,and this was to entail the resurfacing of our cross runway 24/06 (although all training was carried out on 27/09)by the United States government as our runways were made up by concrete blocks.
As part of this task we had to provide the USAF our traffic movements at the base with a years worth of statistics for both runways,but nothing came of it.