Don't know about the questions but Abingdon had that feeling of going back in time. I was there when we took the Buccaneer Major there from St. Athan. It was like a time shift. You could almost expect Nigger the dog to appear, expecting the dambusters to appear any minute.
The airtest of the Bucc scarred the living daylights out of Nodds Hill as squadron pilots air tested the aircraft instead of the resident test pilot. Very low under the VC10 tails and then over Nobbs was quite a sight. Shame OCOps took a dislike to that:-(