Originally Posted by
treadigraph
I remember the Cannon F-111s (and some EF-111s) were at Boscombe in September '86; I recall driving down to see them and stopping by Blackbushe on the way back to see if there were any interesting visitors as it was Farnborough week.
During that era there was a deployment of F-111s from Canon and Mountain Home to Boscombe every three years to exercise and work up from a planned wartime forward operating base. I cannot be certain which years they came but '86 sounds feasible. It was very impressive to see every slot on the flightline occupied by a F-111! The HASs at Boscombe were actually built to support this operation and they were the first to be built on a UK MoD airfield (about 1978?). I remember that the USAF requested the promulgation of a 'HI TACAN' approach because that was their normal IFR join in the US and one was not published for Boscombe; such an approach for the main runway was duly constructed.