Hi,

I'm currently serving at Staxton Wold and have been tasked with researching the units history, however its not been as easy as I'd thought so far. Does anyone have any personal memories, or photos etc. In particular does anyone remember why and when various drawdowns occurred. On the boards it shows a Wg Cdr handing over to a Sqn Ldr in Jul 90, and Sqn Ldr to Flt Lt in Mar 00. In 1974 it states 'autonomy achieved'. Does anyone know what that refers to? Any bit of info would be a great help.
Cheers
Greg

I suggest all Greg needs to do is get access to the F540s for Staxton Wold for the relevent periods.  Also Air Historical Branch, London were a great help to me when I was writing the history of the School of Fighter Control.  Good luck Greg

Greg
further to my previous, the reference to autonomy may well be aligned to the closure of Patrington.   Staxton was a satellite station coming under the command of Patrington during the early 1970s.
Brian

My first visit to Staxton Wold was in 1972 at a Plt Off when I was sent there from Patrington to do some controlling to prove that everything worked - it did. At the time it was a sub station to Patrington and the 'autonomy' in 1974 would coincide with the closure of Patrington. I'm fairly sure there were a few assistants/ADOs on the permanent staff but it was - and remained for many years - very engineer heavy.

My next visit was for 3 years in 1984 as a Sqn Ldr and as 'Sqn Ldr Ops' although in reality the post was OC Ops. The Wendy Cabin had not changed and I felt life was going backwards...I'd just had a brief stint at Neatishead following 3 years at Nieuw Milligen..on each posting all the kit got older! So it was back to low level Lightning 90s using even older consoles....the best of controlling and even as the 'boss' I could normally manage 40 PIs a week plus loads of FA time. At that time the unit was 'autonomous' but operationally I answered to OC Ops at Boulmer.

Driffield was used for accommodation (no single officer accommodation though so there were quite a few on lodging allowance). At that time the base belonged to the Army and was used by the driving school at Leconfield for cross-country driving. Don't be too put off by the photos of the old Officer's Mess (Jan's post). It was bombed during WW2 and never fully reinstated....for several years it was used by various heavily armed chaps to practise taking buildings with hostages (take a guess). This added internally to what the Luftwaffe had started.

Towards the end of my time the first 'digital' radar arrived - a T90. There was no space for it at Staxton so it was sent to Driffield while the UKADGE RP was built at Staxton. This led to the outcome that the really good radar site got the RP building while the much better admin site got the radar - a totally stupid outcome.

A great tour though with lots of good memories.

Richard Jenner