Warbird Information Exchange

I remember reading about these emergency landing strips along England's coastline where badly damaged and barely flyable planes could divert to without fear of running off the runway because it was so darn long. My questions to you are how long were these landing strips, how many were there and did many planes opt to utilize them?

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I'm sure others more knowledgeable will be along to answer in more detail, but by war's end there were three RAF ELG's: Manston, Woodbridge and Carnaby. There was one single runway laid at each site, divided into three parallel strips. Thr combined width of the strip was around 250 yards, although I don't have a figure for the average length.

All three of these emergency strips survive to some degree, Manston closed recently and is threatened by a housing development, Carnaby is an industrial estate but much of the layout survives, and Woodbridge is still an MoD site with a single modern runway layed in the middle of what was once three strips. Each are worth a look on Google Maps.

As for how busy they were, they saw very extensive use! Carnaby handled 147 emergencies in October 1944 alone, and the combined total for all three was over 5,000 by the end of the war.

I was at RAF Manston from 1970 - 1974. It was tasked as a Master Diversionary Airfield (MDA) as the main runway was not only long (nearly two miles long!) but it had the capability to lay down a thick foam carpet if the distressed aircraft required it.

The fire crews used to empty their foam tanks near to the short grass runway to the South of the public road that ran straight through the middle of the camp. At certain times of the year we used to enjoy HUGE mushrooms which grew from the patches where the time-expired foam was sprayed. The mushrooms usually grew up in perfect circles about 20 - 40 feet across. I have some photos taken from the air which clearly show the grass operational areas peppered with these circles. The accepted reason for this was that as Manston was extensively bombed in early 1940 the bomb blasts formed circular scars on the earth, which coupled with the particular nitrates the Luftwaffe used in its ordnance resulted in extremely fertile round areas on the airfield. Thirty years later the regular application of runway foam (base fertiliser) only added to the welcome production of dinner plate sized delicious mushrooms (mushrooms on steroids maybe?).

The main reason that Manston was bombed so thoroughly was that it was right on the coast by the channel Port of Ramsgate and was therefore the nearest RAF airfield to the coast of occupied France and it was not possible to defend it properly as very little radar warning was possible. I believe it held the distinction of being the only RAF airfield on mainland England to be abandoned for a brief period. The deep air raid shelters in the chalk rock behind the Officers Mess still showed some signs of wartime use even in 1970.

Manston's siting weakness had a corresponding advantage of being a handy haven for damaged or fuel-starved aircraft returning from missions later in the war and I believe that nearby Margate Hospital was significantly expanded to cope with the numbers of wounded aircrew. There were a lot.

The main runway was also equipped with the FIDO fog dispersing equipment to cope with poor visibility conditions as Manston was very susceptible to channel fog rolling in quickly with very little warning. I have been within the circuit pattern a couple of times watching it rapidly move in. By the time I had landed you could hardly see your hand in front of your face. So, with flying cancelled for the day the usual thing was to enjoy (yet another) mushroom omelette at the old dispersal hut.

On the other hand Manston would sometimes remain open and clear of fog when the rest of Southern England and Northern France was under a blanket. On one occasion after breakfast we could hardly believe our eyes when confronted by at least 50 or 60 airliners sitting on the dispersal areas, taxiways etc. having been diverted to us during the night with nowhere else to go. I think it was the only time I have ever seen a 747 look small on a runway.

On two occasions I witnessed the runway foamer in action. one was a Comet 4 full of holiday makers carry out a perfect landing without a nosewheel. Like the famous battery it just kept 'going and going and going' until it finally slid off the end and came to rest in the grass among the approach lights. Nobody was hurt. The second was an RAF Canberra with no hydraulics and no visible wheels at all. As it touched the foam the canopy over the pilot was ejected and in quick succession two little figures appeared and slid off the wing into the foam carpet. The Canberra still kept sliding down the runway for another 2 - 300 yards all by itself.

There is a book, probably long out of print, that has meticulously recorded Manston's history including much detail about its wartime record. If anyone's interested I will dig my copy out and answer any inquiries.

Sorry to bore you all with this lengthy post - I hope some may find it of interest.

Cheers

Barry

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Little Johnny : "When I grow up I want to be a pilot!"

Johnny's Mother : "Don't be silly Dear - you can't do both!"

I'm not disputing your theory, but this phenomena is naturally occurring and is traditionaly referred to as fairy rings, pixie circles, etc. I have no doubt the proteins from the foaming agent might provide a rich food for the 'shrooms. Regardless, they sound tasty...I loves me some mushrooms!

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Not boring at all Barry- thank you!




Agree, looks like there are a few heavies at ex-Manston that will become beer cans....

Not boring at all. On the contrary, very informative. I would love to know the name of the book you mentioned about the history on Manston.

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Ain't no sunshine when she's gone!

I was at RAF Woodbridge in the late 80s.
At that time the it was a satellite base for the 81st TFW HQ'd at nearby RAF Bentwaters. At that time the wing had 6 A-10 squadrons, two of which were based at Woodbridge.
The base also housed a special ops unit with HC-130s and MH-53s. Later, two A-10 units left and the 528th Aggressor Squadron with F-16s moved in.

The base had many HASs and squadron buildings, not much else. There was a housing area, chapel and school at Woodbridge, but all wing support functions were at Bentwaters.

I was aware of its wartime use, but there wasn't any sign of them, certainly nothing like a pile of wrecked Stirlings. It might be fun to have a dig around the field, who knows what might turn up.

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Pat - The book was entitled "The History of Royal Air Force Manston". Not a very big publication and I recall it being commissioned and written by one of the serving officers on the station around 1968 - 1970. So probably not very easy to locate one as it more than likely did not merit a general release in mainstream book stores. Having said that I did see a copy on eBay (UK) a few years ago. I'll try and find my copy and post some passages from it for the wartime period. My books and archives are still packed away in boxes since we moved house last November as I've been too slack to build a new bookcase for home. Maybe I should get my 'A into G' and build it - as well as build up my dwindling stock of Brownie Points with the 'Leader of the Opposition'.

Sandiego89 - As you Googled Manston did you notice the variety of old time-expired military types dotted around the non-operational areas of the camp? One of the units to be based there in my time was the Central Training Establishment (CTE) for the RAF's fire crews. They had a large stock of 'out of hours' or damaged aircraft received at Manston for their specific training purposes, which normally meant dressing one or more of their number up in asbestos suits, putting the unfortunate individual in the plane, then stacking lots of inflammable material like old rubber tyres around it, pouring some contaminated fuel over the lot and torching it. After they had a lovely bonfire going they would direct the trainees to extinguish the blaze and practice rescuing the (now quite warm) bloke from inside. I don't recall them ever hurting anyone but it sure was spectacular to watch.

In 1971 they got most of the old Shackletons from the two maritime Squadrons as they were upgrading to the Nimrod. I remember 120 Squadron was one but forget the other one. Their Shacks were definitely the old tailwheel mkII's. After being flown into Manston the ASF staff (Aircraft Servicing Flight) would remove anything of value (not very much at the time - although I did manage to acquire a dinghy to go fishing in), and it was then towed over to the dump area for burning. Just think of all those RR Griffons etc going up in flames - my how things have changed!

We would regularly get (usually weather-related) diversions from all over Europe with some interesting types (well I found them interesting) to crawl over and inspect. On occasions we would get German Air Force F104 Starfighters (they still had a few), Fiat G91's, F4 Phantoms (both RAF and USAAF), and the odd Royal Navy Buccaneer, which was a very big aircraft when you get close up. We also had the Red Arrows team as regular visitors in their Gnats, as they used Manston as a secondary practice field to their normal base at RAF Kemble. There were not many places they could practice a streamer landing and get all nine Gnats on the runway at once.

Also based at Manston was No 1 AEF (Air Experience Flight) which operated Chipmunks to fly air cadets. These used to operate from the Southern grass runway while my unit (617GS) used to fly from the Northern grass runway close by the control tower. (Northern and Southern grass runways were actually the same runway but dissected by the public road going through the middle of the camp) At the time it was normal RAF procedure to make initial contact with the tower using your full aircraft ID number e.g. WB986 and then use the last two digits for subsequent calls (i.e. '86'). One day we had a Vulcan from Scampton use Manston for a practice diversionary approach and the duty local traffic controller confused him with one of the Chipmunks which had the same last two digits on their call-sign. He put the Vulcan on the grass runway close by to the control tower. The pilot of the Vulcan happily complied with the instruction until about 100 feet from touchdown when he called an overshoot and just about shook the tower off its foundations when he applied full go-around power (Olympus x 4). This really did spill the teacups in local control (just like in Top Gun) and resulted in the RAF changing procedures to use full call-signs in the future.

Oh the Happy Days of my Youth.

Barry

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Little Johnny : "When I grow up I want to be a pilot!"

Johnny's Mother : "Don't be silly Dear - you can't do both!"

I was also stationed at RAF Woodbridge in the mid 80's (1985-1992) in the 67th ARRS/SOS. The runway was enormous and famously used during the war for aircraft returning and crash landing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Woodbridge

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Here is a picture of one of the emergency strips. Picture from the USAF Museum in Dayton.

There was also a HUGE runway in the New Forest which is still visible on Google Earth.

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