The only good thing that I can remember about my Prep School,where I was incarcerated in 1955, was the sight of a Handley Page Marathon departing from Bovingdon. How I wished I was on it! I recall a year or so later alighting from the green 353 bus at Ashley Green after another terrible day at school to be welcomed home by the sight of a C47 downwind for Bovingdon with nav lights aglow and undercarriage down,disappearing into the gathering winter dusk. It was a sight and sound that is as fresh to me today as it was all those years ago.
We lived in a tiny cottage under the downwind leg of R/W04. My poor father dreaded the arrival in the sky of any strange, unidentified aeroplane for I was a spoilt brat and pestered him mercilessly to ring up ATC to find out what it was and where it had come from. I think it was this constant badgering that resulted in a tour of the airfield which included the control tower and various aeroplanes. I marvelled at the wicker seats in the Italian Air Force SM102 which lurked in the corner of one of the hangars and seldom flew. Finally I was driven out to the GCA Caravan close by the runway where a bored gum-chewing American peered into a very blank scope and attempted to impart the intricacies of radar to my equally blank and uncomprehending brain.
Suddenly one wonderful day there was an unfamiliar rumble and three B17s were distantly seen flying in formation under the afternoon sun - The War Lover had arrived. A month or so later I was shocked to see the wreck of one of these old bombers being carted away for scrap along the Chesham Road on the back of a couple of huge Queen Marys.
At one time I had a crush on a pretty girl, a passion which was not requited. All was not lost however for although romance was out of the question her father was the Producer of 633 Squadron. Thus on a fine hot summer's day I found myself on location at the side of 04. I was not much interested in The Stars who were sitting around sweating heavily under layers of seemingly impenetrable make-up. My eyes were on the Mosquitoes as time and again they roared off down the runway and tore round the circuit. What a sight and sound! The excellence of Location Catering proved to be another revelation.
Mention of grub reminds me of an Open Day at the airfield when there were plenty of aeroplanes to see but sadly nothing flying. It was on this wet day that I discovered Hot Dogs and sampled Salami for the first time.
Well the years passed and one evening my pal David and I clambered over the airfield gates at the Bourne End end of the runway. We had never been to this end before. We settled in the grass near the threshold to watch a lone Devon performing circuits and bumps and wondered idly whether the pilots would report our presence to ATC. The airfield had always been a great place for watching desk-bound pilots performing circuits and bumps in order to keep their hands in but now it was becoming a shadow of its former self. Nearby on this high ground were the woods where one night in 1948 a civil DC3 had crashed with its cargo of French fruit and all aboard had perished.
In its twilight years the airfield became, to me, less interesting. It was difficult to summon up any great enthusiasm for the newly arrived, strangely named Bassets. By this time I was working in the Ops Room of Autair at Luton. What a pity, I thought, that we couldn't divert an Ambassador or two into Bovingdon when Luton fogged out instead of sending them to Stansted or Heathrow - that would liven the place up a bit - but in reality it was just a fantasy.
One day after the airfield closed David and I wandered over the dispersals on the western side. Here we found fragments of Ansons and bagged a section of elevator to take home as a souvenir of many happy years of watching. Incidentally there is a very fine example of a Bovingdon Anson VL349 in The Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton.
My last visit to Bovingdon was a year or two later. The place was completely deserted and I set off to walk the main runway. I was about halfway down when a distant helicopter suddenly changed course and dived towards me. The Jet Ranger nearly took my head off but I stood my ground. In truth it was more Billy Bunter than James Bond and I expect the bastards laughed their socks off.
I've never been back but I sometimes still dream about Bovingdon and there I am by the traffic lights and the airfield is stuffed with aeroplanes, many weird and unidentifiable and the place hums with activity.
Last edited by OUAQUKGF Ops; 22nd Oct 2012 at 13:59.