Why did RAF CHIVENOR Close??
 

I'm just wondering if anyone could shed some light onto Why RAF Chivenor Closed in the mid 90's? I heard it was one of the best postings a Fighter Jockey could get!

If any one has any great stories they would like to share please post.
Cheers!

Because they didn't need two TWU/AFTS bases (let alone three), and Valley was uncloseable because of what else was there, and for electoral reasons.

Because its written down in some dusty manual of regs that in order to level the playing field and stop anyone whinging that they are missing out on something good only cr@p RAF stations are permitted to remain open. See also, closure of RAF Locking, squaddification of RAF bases in Germany etc.

THS is right, the RAF Transformation Strategy directs that the only Stations to remain are Valley, Marham and HQ Air Command.

Now I thought it was because they needed a decent area to develope for a R/C flying club, a glider school and a launch site for sailing boats! not withstanding the space for housing for a marine logs unit though!
Oh and maybe the odd Yellow Seaking!

I SAY

Hold on old chap, the aircrew made be odd, but the yellow SeaKing is perfectly normal.


Head down, look out for the flack

They had just spent millions doing up the hangars at Chivenor, the work was still going on when they announced the closure!!

Generally accepted as the signal for imminent sale/closure. After all, who doesn't spruce-up their house before trying to flog it?

But they didn't sell it, did they?

Ahhhh, Chivenor!

I was there in the late 80's, and even then we would joke that since the station had been recently modernised it was ripe for closure.

I worked in the new tower/ops/flight planning building, which must have been one of the best in the RAF.

Good accommodation, limited night flying, no weekend flying (SAR flight notwithstanding) and all on a lovely coastal setting! No wonder the locals called it RAF Butlins....

Not to mention a quick medical, watch the ejection video and then access to as much back seat Hawk flying as a young LAC could cope with!

I'd agree with Jackonicko's assessment.

DH

TWU
 

Don't write many posts, but feel the original question wasn't answered (cocktails = nostalgia)...

There was a magic about TWU that made the place(s) special. For the stude, perhaps it was about being made (for the first time?) to feel genuinely part of fast jet flying; operating an aircraft instead of just flying it. Suddenly you were an "adult" who flew, fought, questioned, debriefed, bantered and felt part of a team...indeed at times led it? Plus, the instructors were just as happy to be there as you were.

As to Chivenor, what's not to like...sun, sea, Barnstaple, Saunton Sands beach, the Gribble Inn... just a fabulous part of the UK.

Perhaps testimony to this is a later experience of Brawdy which on the face of it would seem like second fiddle but turned out to be the most rewarding, entertaining , fun, enriching, put-a-huge-smile-on-your-face-tour I ever had...Puddy, Phil F, Chalky...just a few of the myriad characters ...

But back to the grist of the thread....stories of Chivenor; they abound, but my threepenny worth is getting stopped by the feds on the way back from the "Snatch" when duty driver of the stude wheels which were inconspicuously painted in zebra stripes...what could possibly go wrong...

There were two ceremonies going on pretty much at the same time at Bentwaters in the 1990s;

One was to celebrate the formal closure of the base...

The other was to celebrate the completion of the major runway reconstruction (9" of concrete removed and replaced along the whole 3Km length, plus a course on top except for where the jets would have burnt it off at each end on rotation, had they ever operated on the new runway.)

Quite astonishingly, no civil servant was sacked for wasting public money.

These chaps are correct. Chivenor did not close and is alive and well. Indeed I was there in my trusty kite just t'other day. Nope, Chivenor didn't close...... just the RAF abandoned it and handed it over to the Royal Navy.

RAF Chivenor was criminally abandoned to dirt-dwellers (fine chaps though they are - except when wearing pink marigolds and surgical masks...) because:

• It was by far the best RAF station in the UK.
• It was only a few minutes fom Pembrey Range.
• It wasn't in some dreary, god-forsaken Celtic outpost of empire, inhabited by dribbling inbreds who spoke in unintelligible mumbles.
• The locals were overjoyed to see the RAF back again.
• It bordered ample low flying areas, rarely used by other fast jet aircraft.
• It was by far the best RAF station in the UK. Not for nothing was it known as 'Heaven in Devon'.

:=Dangerous grounds, Beagle! ex 120sqdn

Amen, BEagle. 1964 - 1969

Nope - you're all wrong
 

The RAF left Chivenor (now a Royal Marine logistics base) because in 1991 I'd opted for a Civil Service posting to Barnstaple solely because it was near to Chivenor and the room I was to occcupy overlooked the approach. I'd been there on an ATC summer camp in about 1963.

The powers that be couldn't bear the thought that I'd spent (? wasted) many hours gazing out of the window at the Hawks etc flying by :=.

The local rag mentioned that a Harrier Sqn might move in having left Germany but apart from a couple of weeks of an 'away' Harrier deployment including a Rapier set up just off the Tarka Trail at Fremington, that came to naught.

Regards

Chris

An enjoyable ATC camp spent there in 1969, pre modernisation so were were in wooden huts! Great Chipmunk flying low level over the moors to the north; Ilfracombe not far away; 'flying' the Hunter sims, trips through Saunton Sands in the DUKWs from Fremington and an airshow on the last saturday.

From what I've gleaned over the years, I think the basic answer is that there was a greater interest (economy and local politics-driven) to use Brawdy, and Chivenor was simply the victim of this process. I think everyone agrees that it was a mistake and that Chivenor should have stayed in business. But then you could write a book on daft decisions like that!

"The RAF left Chivenor (now a Royal Marine logistics base) because in 1991 I'd opted for a Civil Service posting to Barnstaple solely because it was near to Chivenor and the room I was to occcupy overlooked the approach."

Chris,
As an ex-pupil of both Pilton Primary and Barnstaple School for Boys, I'm trying to picture where this could be. The approach used to be right overhead St. Mary the Virgin - well north of Barum proper.

Slightly off topic, what happened to the old aircraft at the North Devon Flying Club at Wrafton? I seem to remember peering through a side window of the hanger & seeing what I beleive was a Miles Aerovan and at other times a red Magister in the pattern glimpsed from the railway.