Nutloose
They keep on repeating the same mistakes. Nobody has any memories of what happened. Either because the weren't there or cant be bothered to find out what they did before and how it affected people
In 1970 two Britannia Sqns, 22 aircraft, 99 and 511 came to Brize from Lyneham. There was no extra hangar space. Belfast majors were at Abingdon and Brit majors at Aldergrove The Hangar capacity was 6 bays in Base Hangar, three bays were taken with VC10 Base 1,2 and 3 servicing, two bays for Brit servicing, leaving one bay spare plus the hangar that would take 3/4 of a Brit. up to the start of the fin That was the 2nd hangar (from the Bampton road) The one that Jate uses, if they're still there.
There weren't any Married Quarters for BZN people until Phase one (Stanmore Cres style) and then Phase two, Robinson close style. Phase one BTW was built by RAF shifts from both lines (VC10& Belfast LSS and Brit.LSS) on their standdowns. Block of flats took 2 weeks. There wasn't enough MQs for those already at Brize as it was. Brize had Hirings/MQs on the Smith's estate in Witney, Long Hanbrough, (between Witney and Woodstock) Wantage, Cirencester, Bampton, Fairford, Highworth, Down Ampney, South Cerney. On top of that guys were renting houses all over the place, anywhere they could get a place for their families. MT had a bus service to match Oxford South Midland bus Co. Even after the MQ building programmes were complete there were people still living in half the places I mentioned above.
Base Hangar had around 4-500 men at least. The line shifts must have had 50 blokes ,all trades and ranks to each shift. Brize was massive, roughly 5000 blokes, I might be a bit on the low side there. I used to get most Friday afternoons off, if not the whole day, we had so much over capacity in men.
So the Brize fleet was 13 VC10 (after 809 left) 22 Britannias and 10 Belfasts. It wasn't quiet then. Pre flight eng. runs and the Belfast was a pain for falling down on them and lasted for hours. The local fliers were at least three, one of each type were prepped each night for the next day (Mon-Fri) and 4 routes before it got light was an easy night shift. People complain more than they did and know there is a fair chance of compensation. Back then it wasn't common practise unless the farm animals started giving birth every time there heard a jet.
Last edited by vc10617; 9th Oct 2013 at 20:30.