Originally Posted by
NutLoose
Said it before and will say it again, we should never destroy airfields, put pongoes on them by all means or anyone else, but leave the airfield infrastructure complete, you can build a camp if you need to house pongoes almost anywhere, but try to find a site and build an airfield where Mr and Mrs not in my backyard will not fight it tooth and nail. and the cost compared to a fenced in accomodation plot for pongoes will be staggering.
Flogging the Harrier off for spare parts put that more or less to bed, when they did the Jag take off
PR stunt I seem to remember they struggled to find a straight enough stretch, long enough, clear of obstacles and without bridges over it to use., fast fwd to today with poor road surfaces and aircraft no longer built to operate in such conditions you would struggle.
I would be interested to know how long people think the RAF would be able to put up a defence to a credible threat to this Country from an Air Force we might face today. dependant on the build up to hostilities and the ability to disperse, Couple of days if lucky.?
No wonder the likes of China over Hong Kong and Russia laugh when we rattle our sabres at them these days.
Regarding retention of airfields, surplus or otherwise, it would seem that the logic behind maintaining Kinloss and Leuchars appears to follow your logic NutLoose. However, I don't think dispersal for any true military requirements are the reason. They were both retained in tact to provide reasonable diversion airfields for Lossiemouth and, of course, we're seeing right now the demand on both to maintain any kind of operational RAF presence north of Yorkshire. By rights, as with Abingdon, Cottesmore, Finningley etc, Kinloss and Leuchars would have been abandoned for any such operational use. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility to imagine the mandarins overruling the air staff and perhaps the other service boards by leaving us in a situation today, with nothing in Scotland while airfield works went on at Lossie.
FB