TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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Hello and welcome to the Field Association on Air.
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We are a group of residents who are passionate about tackling all aspects of local and national government decisions that affect local communities.
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In each episode, various members of the Field Association will be exploring a range of subject matters, discussing all the angles of each issue and interviewing those who can add an expert or helpful point of view.
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So grab yourself a tea or coffee and listening as we look to navigate through these current challenges.
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Welcome to the the Three Fields on Air podcast.
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Today is something slightly different.
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We're actually talking to Ross Stewart.
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Well, I'll let Ross introduce himself and explain what he, what his involvement was with the airbase.
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But it's a very special place up there, lots of, lots of elements that are close to people's hearts and I'm hoping well I know that this will be really insightful for a lot of people who know the bases up there but don't really know some of the history and what's gone on and why it's so special to a lot of people.
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So welcome Ross, if you'd be kind enough to introduce yourself and just explain a bit about the history of the base and why it's so special.
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Right, well, I'm Ross Stewart.
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I was a Chief Inspector in the MOD police and I worked at Weather's Field for 12 years before I retired after 35 years police service.
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I was the police information manager and who ran the communications department, the after retiring in 2012,.
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Americans turn up at those gates every week.
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It's not surprising.
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Over 4,000 got married to local girls.
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In fact, I just looked at an article that I'd get ready for the event this week and it said 200 a month at that point in time when that was written.
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We're marrying local girls, so that's why because they come back here.
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They come to Braintree, ipswich, cambridge, that triangle, chelmsford, and they all have relatives in this area.
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So when they come over and visit relatives, they wanted to go back.
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You know the whole museum, because that's the second thing in my introduction is I became the curator of a museum there and now that is the Weather's Field their field heritage group, because we don't have a museum, so we had to take the word museum out of it.
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So we're Weather's Field their field heritage group and I'm the chairman of that and curator, because the archive still exists.
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And that came about because there was a lady that wrote to the Chief Consul Al Fitchcock in 2014.
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Her husband she was from Braintree.
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They married in 1961.
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She's lived in America all that time but they came back every two years to visit family in Braintree and her husband tried to get on the base to see where his old base that he had served at 2008 and 2012.
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And both times he was refused entry.
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That's understandable.
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Sometimes there was things going on and one of the other problems was that people that worked on that base at that time were public servants.
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They're not paid to be tourist guides, so they're meant to be sitting at a desk doing work.
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So you know, that was generally one of the reasons.
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Other reasons might be there might have been police exercises going on, etc.
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So, but he died in 2014.
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And his widow, the lady Carol Zimmer and he was Bruce Zimmer, he was a mechanic in the Air Force 1960, 61,.
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When he met her and married Carol wrote to the Chief Constable and his last his dying wish was to have his ashes scattered on the airfield and the Chief Constable was quite moved by that because basically, it was his third attempt to enter the base and he didn't refuse that.
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But no one knew where to scatter the ashes.
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So they contacted me.
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I retired and you know I was interested in the history and asked me if I would post the day and help out, which I did.
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After that, the Chief Constable called me over a cup of coffee and said Bruce, I've discovered there are lots of letters here and there are lots of people and I don't want to have Americans refused from entering the base.
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I've got.
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We've got nothing to hide.
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We've got nothing, but for the reasons that I gave earlier, it's not the job of a public servant to be a tourist guide.
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I said I thought you, being retired, maybe, and known the history, how would you fancy hosting them?
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So it evolved from there and subsequent meetings.
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After that we talked about the local people, the people that used to work there, history groups, et cetera, and by 2015, that evolved into having a museum, because everybody that came brought memorabilia and it grew and it grew and a number of people that listened to this podcast will have been at the museum, which ran in it properly from 2016 until COVID.
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And then we had a few months after COVID and then the MOD, as we all know, the specter of the prison service and the Ministry of Justice moving in there loomed over us, and that's really where our problems started.
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We invited that team of people that came to tell us all about what they were going to do with the prison there and we'd answer all our questions.
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We invited them because they said they tried to ignore heritage.
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We invited them to the museum on the 5th of November I remember on 5th of November 2021.
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And on the 11th they never turned up.
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They accepted the invite but they didn't turn up.
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And on the 11th of November the power was turned off when the building, the museum was in, and we were told it was no longer safe to operate.
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I mean, that's a little bit tinged, that story, isn't it?
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That's a little bit sad, really, because it was on travel on quite nicely.
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But look, we've got.
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Obviously there's scampions in the news at the moment and they put a big play, don't they, on the Danbusters and the history and all that sort of thing.
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Is Weathersfield a bit boring compared to that, or has it got some amazing stories and history of its own?
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It has amazing stories, tony.
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First of all, the 416th that were there.
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They flew over 100 missions to France.
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Their primary job was the V1 sites in France ammunition depots and tank depots, et cetera.
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So they flew that and they were the first of the type of airplane to be used by the Americans over here was a medium bomber, medium light bomber, the A20 Havoc.
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So yeah, they got a great history After that.
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After they left, they moved over to France After D-Day and by September we had captured airfields in France as medium and light bombers.
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They moved to an airfield in France so they could then start to reach further north into Holland and Germany from France.
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So what moved into Weathersfield after that was the RAF, but it was a group like Weathersfield itself that's seldom talked about in its history, is like hidden away, because they were the RAF-38 group and they worked for the SAS and the Special Operations Executive, the SOE.
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Soe were trained at Audley and House and the SAS, believe it or not, moved into Essex and some people will know they were at Highlands House, they were at Slow House, they were a number of the big houses, different units, and in fact one
of those units, the supply and liaison part of the SAS, the 20th liaison group, were actually at the mushroom farm and it turns out that I didn't find out until 2017 that my grandfather was the Lieutenant Quarrenmaster there and he was also a French liaison officer, because two French units of SAS the 3rd and 4th SAS were based in Ipswich but they billeted at the mushroom farm and they would go on their big sterling bombers and they would fly out from there.
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And one of our favourite stories is a local man that many people will know and sadly he's passed away now, but he came to the museum twice was Barry Webb.
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He used to have a restroom in the Finchamfield called the Nosebag.
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Henry's wife, aileen Barry, was a pilot in World War II of one of those big sterling bombers at Weathersfield.
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So we had, you know, and we gathered amazing stories from him.
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He wrote 10 pages down.
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So there we go, the SAS.
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But it gets better than that.
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What we had was the first American tactical nuclear fighters and bombers at Weathersfield and we had nuclear bombs.
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We can't claim to have the first nuclear bomb, because RAF Scotland thought was also part of that, but we were in there as part of the first units of NATO with the F-84 Thunder Jets that the Americans flew there and then in 1957, they brought in the SuperSaver, the F-100 that everybody knows and it's a plane that everybody loves as the SuperSavers and many local people remember going up to the base and seeing them and hearing them flying over.
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And the famous story is when they used to go into the speed of sound, the sonic boom, they broke the windows at Spain's hall and Sir Bucco's rise called the commander up, sent his Rolls Royce down to pick him up and take him up there to ask about who was going to repair and fix the windows in Spain's hall to get it fixed.
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So, but yes, so the nuclear bombs then and then after that the last unit that we had was the Red Horse.
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So I think you're right.
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If you compare us to Scampton, our British history was kind of secretive the SAS and the RAF-38 group and the Special Operations Executive.
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So not much said, written or talked about that and the American history is not something the units that were there is not something that people nationally in Britain are, you know, affable with.
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I remember hearing a story I don't know if this is true or not, ross that when the planes were taken off from Weathersfield, one of the local farmers was taking potshots at it with a shotgun.
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Have you heard that?
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Yeah, well, that's a story that goes back to World War II the airfield.
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In fact, the celebration we're going to have this weekend, on Sunday, is the 80th anniversary of the airfield, so that's 80 years, 1943 to 1983.
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The airfield was actually ready and commissioned in December 1943.
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But prior to that it was used.
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There was a grass runway and that was used for spitfires and other airplanes that escorted the big bombers, the B-17s, from Ridgewell.
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And then it was decided that in 1942 that they would build a big airfield and a big concrete runway and the farm where in question was Peacock's farm, right at the end of where the old World War II runway ended, because it was expanded for the Super Saver Jets in 1957.
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And he lost his farm and it wasn't too happy about it because he had 50 acres and 25 of which he had cut down trees and plough and turned into arable land, so he used to fire his shotgun at them.
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Another farmer that used to fire his shotgun later on was when they took the Supersonic Jets engines, they used to take them over to the Gainesford Endend.
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There, the gate that goes to the Gainesford Endend and Fleurs Hall and the farmer there this always makes me chuckle.
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The farmer at Fleurs Hall was called Farmer Bloom and he had Fleurs Hall.
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They set his field on fire because when these jet engines are tested they were on the back of a truck, not the whole truck but just the carriage part of the truck.
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They were on one of those and tied down and then they'd fire up the engine to test that they repaired it properly.
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And the afterburner big flame.
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They had forgotten they hadn't put earthbanks up there.
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If you go there now you'll see they ended up putting 30 foot earthbanks because the flames went right into the field and set his field on fire.
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And the noise, the noise of those engines, because quite often to do at a time at that time would be horrific and he would come across with his shotgun and threatened to shoot airmen and that would be in the 1960s that that would have happened.
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Yeah, so I'm laughing at that.
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I'm sure if I had my field burnt down I wouldn't be.
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I'd probably pull out the shotgun as.
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I don't fancy his chances, though, against the whole air force, but fair play to.
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So what about?
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I mean again, you can still, from the perimeter, you can see all sorts of well, you can see a splatter in a building, can't you have variety buildings, including the hangars.
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What sort of buildings are still over there, ross?
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What special or architectural interest?
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Well, there are two T2 hangars, type two that is, and as far as we could find out from our research, in 1943, it was meant to be a B17 base of big bombers and an extension of Ridgewell and the Americans required type two hangars.
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They're really quite big hangars and there's not too many of them left around the UK and there's actually two weathersfields so and a lot of other places like Ridgewell itself.
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The T2 hangars have long gone and it's just fields up there and a few Nissan Hunts.
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So they're quite and they've got a long, good history of themselves.
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And, as far as we could find out but I can't prove the story, but we were told that in 1943, there was a shortage of steel in the UK.
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The Americans had asked for these two hangars, so the Americans prefabricated them at the steel in America and it was shipped over here, brought to Weathersfield and then built.
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So, as far as we know, they're possibly were created in America and built up over here.
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So type two hangars.
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The other buildings that exist is another one.
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I've mentioned the chapel.
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I have about trying to get it listed.
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The other thing that we didn't manage to get listed was there's five, there's eight people called Dutch Barnes because they look like Dutch Barnes, and in fact at the moment the farmers, I believe.
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I'm not sure if they're still allowed to, but the farmers store hay in them and Essex Fibregate used one or two of them for their road traffic rescue teams that trained up there.
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I'm not even sure if they're still on the site.
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It's very hard to find out anything that's happening on the site now.
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It's become more secretive than it did in the SES days, I think.
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So those eight Barnes are pretty much as they were when they were built in 1960.
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And as far as we're concerned they were unique.
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But Historic England didn't agree with that and neither did the MOD.
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They quoted the reason for failing the listing that, oh well, there are hangars like this Upper Hafer, by their own admission, they said, but they're actually bigger in a different type.
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And there are some of these hangars at Bentwaters.
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And yes, they're right, they're the same,
because Bentwaters and Woodbridge and Wellesfield were connected in the Cold War.
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The units worked from both and those hangars were there, but they're not all there.
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The thing about Wellesfield is they're all there as they were in 1960.
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In fact you can be seen in the film Think of Taylor Soldiers by with Gary Oldman and Benny Bid, benedict Cumberbatch, because they made an authentic background for a Cold War spy film.
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So it's quite interesting that they would say they weren't unique when pretty much most local historians and airfield historians would argue against that and say they were.
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What's also interesting about that is that they grade two listed the bump dump which sits next to that and it has three igloos that held nuclear bombs and one igloo and by igloo I just made it.
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It's like a concrete bunker with a lead lined in the heavy steel doors that they stored the bombs in and one of them they stored the detonators for the bombs and they've got blast walls and they kind of covered over with grass.
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The idea was that the Russians couldn't see them on a satellite.
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If you look from above it still just looks like a field next to the airfield.
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But the grade two listed those that they're not unique, because there are some of those that many of the other airfields, because by nature, the way they were built and the strength of them, they've not been demolished or destroyed and have not decayed very much, but they go hand in hand with the.
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The Victor Alert is what the Dutch the proper name for where the Dutch Barrens are.
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They go hand in hand, they complement each other as part of the history.
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So historic England's thinking on all that is quite difficult to figure out really.
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I've seen some of the pictures from the air and the Victor Alert sort of area.
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It's quite amazing.
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It's like little figures, of eight almost, and I think it might be yourself that said to me once the planes were already were always fuelled and facing downtown Moscow, ready to kind of zip out one at a time and shoot off.
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Yeah, yeah, it's in fact on our Facebook pages and the museum runs two runs one called RAF Weatherfield Heritage Group.
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That one you can't really post on, that you can comment on our posts, but that one is run by the museum secretary and it's purely about the history of the site.
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There's a second, more social one, that's a private site and you have to have good credentials and reason and connection to the air base to join it.
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And I administer that along with someone from America that served at Weatherfield and that one's more of a social one, the.
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Yeah, you you'll find that on there.
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There are some pilots that were here, cold war pilots that flew those jets.
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So we've been able to get firsthand experience from them of what happened there and they called it alert days and they would go there.
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And there's two buildings there.
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One was the canteen and the chef married a girl from Halstead, so he comes over every dog person.
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So he comes over every couple of years to visit family in Halstead.
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He told us he cooked for 25 people in there.
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There would be eight pilots and eight crew chiefs and the building next to it had a crew ready room, kind of like you'd think, scramble, scramble, sitting, reading newspapers and putting cards etc.
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And it had rooms and they billeted there for four or five days and they were ready to scramble.
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Two airplanes always had a pilot in it and a crew chief with it and they couldn't.
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There's a red line in front of that barn.
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If you look at those Dutch barns today, you'll see a red painted line.
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Had to be two people across that If only one person tried to cross it the police security guards, who also come back and visit Chesterfield, one of our favourites on the Facebook page their instruction was to shoot anybody.
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So it was a two man rule.
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One person could not cross that red line on their own because they might have been stealing a jet with a nuclear bomb on it.
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All eight planes would have the nuclear bombs on them and ready to go.
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Two would have the pilot in it and the crew chief would be there to help the pilot get started off and go.
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The airplanes would take off down the runway two at a time and they would have an envelope in there with their instructions telling them, once they got in there, what their target was.
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It would have been predetermined what their target was, unless that was changed over the radio so, and then they would swap over.
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So they would do a couple of hours in there, then they go back and have six hours rest and another two would go out, and if they scrambled they would all get out and then the next two planes.
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So the way that you see those bombs pointing is two, two, two and I down the taxiway on the runway and off to somewhere in the Soviet Union.
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So
Ross, what's amazing about that is, I mean, I drive past those barns, those Victor Alert almost every day when I'm sort of going out with the dogs or whatever, or walking with them or on my way to the dog walk or whatever it might be, and it's so peaceful and it's so quiet.
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Obviously, we know it's about to get a little bit busier over there, but it's so quiet and the history is all around you and, funny enough, you talk about flowers.
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Oh, I go down around Games to the End quite a lot, walk the dogs and what have you, and it's just all around you.
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There's all concrete posts and look where bunkers were and the stop gates and that sort of thing, and it's just peace and quiet now.
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But you can imagine and with your stories you just transport yourself back in time it was an absolute hive of activity.
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Do you know what the meet and greet?
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I'm going to show a 22 minute black and white film that was taken in World War II and it goes through the kind of mission from start to finish, from the briefing at Weathersfield in 1944.
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It's a fantastic piece of film and people can find it at the 416th website and they'll find the film on there and I'm going to run that in UCD Airplanes taking off down the runway.
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When I was a chief inspector there, on one of those sort of days where it's quite stressful and you've had a bad day in the office, quite often at lunchtime I'd get out of the office and I'd walk down the runway.
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And it's so because it de-stressed you, because I'd walked down that runway from one end to the other during my lunch break and the quietness, the solitude of it that I would walk down there and I could imagine those World War II airplanes because I knew the film and I could just see them going down the runway and taking off.
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It's quite a wonderful idea.
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I have to spend two hours with the Colonel from the US Embassy discussing the World War II Memorial plaques.
00:25:44.731 --> 00:25:58.252
I've been doing the Himmials back and forth between the 416th and the MOD police and the DIO to try and get it sorted out.
00:25:58.252 --> 00:26:19.336
Now they refused to hand them over to the museum in March this year when the 416th Bomb Group Association, as the relatives of the men from World War II, asked us if we could recover it for them.
00:26:19.336 --> 00:26:24.972
But the DIO said that the property of the United States Air Force is taken for a congressman.
00:26:24.972 --> 00:26:44.821
For one of those relatives, steve Roy, whose father was a mechanic in World War II in the 400s, taken for him to go to his congressman to get the congressman to write to the ambassador to get them to try and sort it out.
00:26:44.821 --> 00:26:56.252
And that's why the Colonel of the military at Atashi for the Air Force called me today to see what I could do and I said, well, I've already tried.
00:26:56.252 --> 00:27:08.800
They said, well, let's try again, but the embassy will support in trying to get this sorted out and try and get these memorial plaques recovered from the MOD.
00:27:08.800 --> 00:27:13.053
So I had a long day of it today.
00:27:13.213 --> 00:27:14.016
Oh bless you.
00:27:14.016 --> 00:27:16.724
It seems such an easy thing to do, doesn't it?
00:27:16.724 --> 00:27:18.631
Just get them and hand them over.
00:27:18.651 --> 00:27:19.733
Well, that's what he said.
00:27:19.733 --> 00:27:22.098
He said this has been going on for over a year.
00:27:22.098 --> 00:27:25.913
Why is there a problem with handing them over to the museum?
00:27:25.913 --> 00:27:29.838
It's a pretty little bit of the brass.
00:27:29.838 --> 00:27:40.000
What was the issue for the, the IO and the MOD police from handing over to us?
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:41.061
I said, well, I don't know.
00:27:41.061 --> 00:27:50.872
But they said that they would contact the United States Air Force and hand them over to them as it was their property.
00:27:50.872 --> 00:27:54.721
But they obviously never done that because they're still in the professional MOD police.
00:27:54.721 --> 00:27:55.912
So we'll see.
00:27:55.912 --> 00:27:57.516
But that's the way it goes.
00:27:57.516 --> 00:28:09.023
You know that we've always had a not too great relationship with them, since they decided that we had to leave the air base.
00:28:09.200 --> 00:28:10.112
Well, let's just.
00:28:10.112 --> 00:28:16.105
I mean, you've touched on it, but talk to me about this event that you're organising for this coming.
00:28:16.105 --> 00:28:18.050
Is it this Sunday, the 20th?
00:28:18.050 --> 00:28:18.592
Am I right?
00:28:19.051 --> 00:28:20.674
Yeah, on Sunday the 20th.
00:28:20.674 --> 00:28:45.299
We chose that because August the 20th is when the Cold War Group, the 20th Fighter, wing 20 again and that's actually it's 80 years since they were actually formed as a fighter group for World War II, the 20th Fighter Group.
00:28:45.299 --> 00:28:47.731
So that was one reason for Tuesday.
00:28:47.731 --> 00:28:54.790
Another one was that the World War II group 416 it's actually the time when they were formed.
00:28:54.790 --> 00:29:00.123
They formed in 1943 in August and they came to Weathersfield on the 1st of February.
00:29:00.123 --> 00:29:01.874
So it was quite an appropriate day.
00:29:01.874 --> 00:29:12.700
We had to pick a day early in the year last year to allow Americans to organise their holiday trips, come to visit family, tie in with it.
00:29:12.700 --> 00:29:20.306
So we got 20 Americans, 10 actually coming over from America and 10 what I call Anglo Americans.
00:29:20.767 --> 00:29:28.532
Not all of them went home again some of them loved it here so much that they stayed here a few and brain tree, the
Weathersfield area, etc.
00:29:28.532 --> 00:29:44.183
So so we got 20 in total and they'll be there and we we do have a private meeting agreed because we're limited on space for that parking space is my biggest problem there, probably.
00:29:44.183 --> 00:30:10.382
But and people that they get them in, but people that supported the museum we decided to invite along to that and then it starts at 10 o'clock in the morning but all those invites have gone out and those spaces being filled, but half past 12 we'll start the public event in Weathersfield and we'll all move away from where the the private meeting greet is.
00:30:10.382 --> 00:30:21.532
There be, I believe, about 22 military vehicles from World War II and that the people that do these four different groups have supported us.
00:30:21.532 --> 00:30:24.784
You know they could have went to Ramsey's 1940 weekend.
00:30:24.784 --> 00:30:27.674
They could have went to Bentwater's 80th anniversary.
00:30:27.674 --> 00:30:34.537
They chose to come to Weathersfield because they want to support us and try and get this museum up and running again.
00:30:34.537 --> 00:30:37.751
They believe that the history of Weathersfield is so important.
00:30:37.751 --> 00:30:39.659
So there's about 22 of them.
00:30:39.659 --> 00:30:47.461
They all dress up, they're wonderful, they're great people, they're great fun and there'll be a great day with them.
00:30:48.544 --> 00:30:50.890
The pavilion at the sports field.
00:30:50.890 --> 00:30:53.316
They're going to move down there and part of that as well.
00:30:53.316 --> 00:31:04.913
The pavilion will run a history of the village exhibition and we'll run a mini exhibition in the snooker room of the club and everybody's welcome to go down there and see that.
00:31:04.913 --> 00:31:23.574
Also in the club we'll be having a UK versus USA darts match, so it'll be run by the club, probably starting about four o'clock, five o'clockish time, and some of the Americans we know from our facebook page have been buying dartboards and practicing before they get they get here.
00:31:23.574 --> 00:31:26.002
It was a big class time for the Americans.
00:31:26.002 --> 00:31:34.403
They all remember playing darts when they were over here in the 19, from the 1950s to the to 1990.
00:31:34.703 --> 00:31:38.832
In the village hall there'll be I'll be giving the talk.
00:31:38.832 --> 00:31:57.721
Making this talk different, I'll call it POW, so not prisoners of war or prisoners of Weathersfield, it's people of Weathersfield and I'm going to run through chronologically in the 80 years, various people of Weathersfield that I think are worth mentioning.
00:31:57.721 --> 00:32:06.275
After that there'll be a live singer and a bar in the village hall as well.
00:32:07.135 --> 00:32:10.645
That sounds fantastic, so is anyone welcome to come along to the public event.
00:32:11.175 --> 00:32:11.958
The public event.
00:32:11.958 --> 00:32:13.743
Anyone's welcome to come along.
00:32:13.743
--> 00:32:21.188
Yes, obviously, respect the village, respect the people that live in the village.
00:32:21.188 --> 00:32:23.680
Parking will be up at the sports field.
00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:37.734
There'll be public parking space up there because, being the village it is, it's not got a lot of parking space in the streets etc and the residents so generally use that, so people are welcome to go there.
00:32:37.734 --> 00:32:38.957
There'll be a food fan.
00:32:38.997 --> 00:32:46.449
We've been lucky that the gourmet chef has stepped in to help us.
00:32:46.449 --> 00:32:48.823
He's done an American menu for the day.
00:32:48.823 --> 00:32:55.694
The other company that stepped in to support us and helped is Pump House Brewery from Toppersfield.
00:32:55.694 --> 00:32:59.685
They're creating a special gift box for the day.
00:32:59.685 --> 00:33:09.347
They've got ales that they already made about the World War II airplane and about the Yi Day.
00:33:09.347 --> 00:33:24.344
Paul from Pump House Brewery tells me they've designed a special gift box for the event and there'll be three bottles of beer in there the ninth-havoc ale, amber, allied amber, don't know what the third one will be.
00:33:24.344 --> 00:33:35.686
It'll be £10 a box and they, I expect, will be on sale in the village hall, the village club and at the Green man Pub in Toppersfield and at Pump House Brewery.
00:33:36.195 --> 00:33:37.339
We have a bus going up there.
00:33:37.339 --> 00:33:40.682
It's a double-decker bus I don't really want to talk too much about that.
00:33:40.682 --> 00:33:43.883
We have a big event like this.
00:33:43.883 --> 00:33:57.583
Well, it grew arms and legs and one of our problems has been we've been so busy focusing on other things we forgot about the amount of parking space at the meet and greet and we forgot about the bus can only hold 52 people.
00:33:57.583 --> 00:34:04.067
So I think the bus is fairly well built up already, but it might not be.
00:34:04.775 --> 00:34:12.083
Well, ross, I said this to Andrew on the last podcast Because this is listened to by literally millions of people.
00:34:12.083 --> 00:34:13.797
I'm going to apologise now.
00:34:13.797 --> 00:34:18.300
Obviously, if there's a sudden rush on Sunday from all the listeners, all right.
00:34:18.300 --> 00:34:19.384
Well, listen, ross.
00:34:19.384 --> 00:34:22.563
I just want to finish up by asking what are your hopes for the museum?
00:34:22.563 --> 00:34:25.684
We've literally just got a couple of minutes left.
00:34:25.684 --> 00:34:27.199
Hopes for the museum.
00:34:27.199 --> 00:34:28.423
Would you like to get back on the base?
00:34:28.423 --> 00:34:29.684
What would you like the future to be?
00:34:30.976 --> 00:34:32.681
We'd love to be back on the base.
00:34:32.681 --> 00:34:42.606
We've, you know, there's been a few possibilities and they've all fallen through, the latest one being the greedy duck to do a display in there.
00:34:42.606 --> 00:34:45.362
We're very lucky to local farmers.
00:34:45.362 --> 00:34:47.407
I gave a storage space.
00:34:47.407 --> 00:34:52.181
That's how much archive we had, so we're very lucky there.
00:34:53.076 --> 00:34:55.920
The future, I don't know.
00:34:55.920 --> 00:35:04.126
We would love to get back on the base but we just don't see it happening because either home office and the MOD just don't communicate with anybody.
00:35:04.126 --> 00:35:11.068
It doesn't seem possible to be able to get the dialogue, to get that going.
00:35:11.068 --> 00:35:13.527
So what could happen?
00:35:14.335 --> 00:35:17.925
Looking at the local plan I've got the right name for it, the neighborhood plan.
00:35:17.925 --> 00:35:29.146
That's how the parish councils and in that there's a lovely map on their fantastic map that has the bomb dump now graded to listed as a heritage area.
00:35:29.146 --> 00:35:32.503
I don't see any reason why we couldn't get into there.
00:35:32.503 --> 00:35:51.226
And even if we can't get the public interest now, it could give us a year or so with funding from the councils, the heritage, Essex heritage committees and groups Braintree District Council, parish council to start to create a wonderful heritage site in there.
00:35:51.226 --> 00:36:03.527
And we have the items to go in it, we have the knowledge and the stories to help to run it, and it's something that the Braintree Council could build on as a heritage and tourism center.
00:36:03.527 --> 00:36:08.126
So that might be one of our aspirations for the future that we might start looking at.
00:36:09.217 --> 00:36:26.143
Ross, I think that sounds like a fantastic idea and obviously we'd love to support you, and hopefully that will come out in the neighborhood plan as well and we'll see the museum available for the local community for years and years to come, because I think it'd be a great asset a great asset, and we'd be lovely to keep that knowledge, wouldn't it?
00:36:26.143 --> 00:36:26.876
So?
00:36:26.916 --> 00:36:35.728
I'd keep this to you and we'll go back into storage for six months after this event and then we'll sit down and we'll review it there.
00:36:35.728 --> 00:36:43.608
But maybe somebody will pick up on that idea of getting us into the bomb dump and using the buildings in there.
00:36:44.597 --> 00:36:45.219
Ross, well, listen.
00:36:45.219 --> 00:37:20.048
Thank you very much for your time, really appreciate it, and good luck on Sunday you.