RAF Newton For Sale
 

Hi All

The 595 acre airfield site of RAF Newton, Notts, is being sold, with a closing date for offers, by 12 June 2003

Regards Martin Burney

I'll take it... have it wrapped will you? :)

Actually it's rather a nice station with a leafy, well manicured married patch and a 'classic' officers' mess It was also the only station I served at in recent years (albeit briefly) where they still had a batman who brought you tea in the morning (batwoman to be more accurate)

I assume that Newton will not become a centre for asylum seekers. It’s far too depressing to go on about the money wasted at Newton and the inter service rivalry that could have kept it going in some form. The widening of the A46 was due to take out some of the Officers MQ’s and of course the Airman’s MQ’s were sold off long ago. Unfortunately the suburbs of Nottingham spread around Newton and the newly arrived residents objected to the Bulldogs and Chipmunks disturbing their rural bliss.


My fondest memory of the place is when we stayed open one September evening to allow three BE2 replicas to come in and refuel before going on to Finningley. Their progress was sedate to say the least but as I fired a green for them to land I wouldn’t have known if it was 1993 (or 94) or nearly 80 years earlier.

And seeing the Vulcan land there must have been impressive.

I did a lot of gliding from Newton in the late 50s when it was the base for No 2 Gliding Centre which trained instructors for the Air Cadet weekend schools. The airfield had what I believe was a unique feature in that the designated runway had an 11 degree kink in it.

This arose because a previous Sation Commander was one Batchy Atcherley - in his youth a member of the RAF's High Speed Flight which cleaned up the Schneider Trophy in 1931. Batchy started every day with a spirited beat-up of the airfield in his personal mount, usually a Spitfire and I had enjoyed many of these when my posting had earlier co-incided with Batchy's at Cranwell.

By the 50s he had moved on to a Meteor. When he arrived at Newton he found that the runway was officially too short for his Meteor so he sat down with the plans, drew the longest line possible, then bent it sufficiently to make the new 'runway' just long enough for his morning workouts to continue to delight his troops.

Yes I had heard about the 'Kink' but never knew why, what a good story :D

Anywell tell us more about the Vulcan ????

Neg G:D