shack and John Purdey - thanks so much for your confirmation of Merryfield matters!
Having grown up about 1/2 mile from the place - and having lived nearby for the following 25 or so years, I often wondered whether the stories I'd been told were true. I can remember (just) certain parts of Merryfield's history - Princess Anne's visit, the airshows of the mid-50s, the Sabres being modified by Westlands, the Royal Navy era when the squadrons moved to Merryfield whilst VLN was being prepared for the new Sea Vixen.....
There was an amazing airshow in 1958 - probably the last ever held. Everything from a Spitfire to a very low-level Vulcan, plus a Bleriot monoplane, Bristol Fighter.....
I went back down to Somerset at the end of last year to attend 'Farmer' John Steele's funeral in nearby Isle Abbotts. He'd been a 'trapper' in the 50s and had inspired me to join the mob in 1968.....but I had to go and say hello to Merryfield and was delighted to find that the aerodrome looks smarter now then ever - but no real permanent facilities except for the control tower. The Officer's Mess area had been bought by my late father and his ex-FAA business partner in the 70s. We kept 3000 pigs there (some of the old Ilton folk reckoned that improved the tone of the place....), then sold the site - and it's now a housing estate.
Other tales - of 'Flush' Kendall, 'Kipper' Smith, Pete Cornish...the vectored thrust Meteor trials (I explored the tunnels years later)...the 'bomb dump' where Army reserve units would set up their AA guns during summer camps...stories about how the RAF QFIs would race off to 'The Volunteer' in Seavington St Michael or 'The Shrubbery' in Ilminster for a few ales whenever the weather was too poor to fly...after the Borneo campaign when a whole squadron of Pioneers and Twin Pins stopped over to refuel....a Lancaster flying down from Kinloss to drop off a salmon for the OM dining-in night....a Canberra landing in the Suez crisis so that the pilot could nip off to Alec Scott's garage to fill up an off-the-ration jerrycan of petrol....
I learned to ride a bike there, learned to drive a car there, learned to fly model aeroplanes there, learned to fly a glider there.....and learned a few other things with a girlfriend in the overgrown bomb dump there. A wonderful aerodrome - long may it remain so.
...and getting back to the thread topic, I can also remember seeing most of a Meteor NF stuck in the overrun of RW09 - except for the radar nose which had cleared the road and was on the far side! Cdr Tim Kearsley RN was there wondring how on earth they were going to shift it!!
Last edited by BEagle; 30th Oct 2002 at 21:31.