Hidden in hedgerow

From the Swindon Advertiser, first published Wednesday 13th Mar 2002.

TODAY a small piece of crumbling concrete hidden in an overgrown hedgerow is all that remains of a former RAF station near Swindon which played a major part in helping to beat Hitler's war machine.

There is nothing else left to mark the site where thousands of young men were trained as pilots and went on to give their all fighting for their country.

At one time it was estimated that 90 per cent of all RAF bomber pilots went through RAF Watchfield to learn how to land in bad weather.

Now, where planes once flew around the clock, there is a sprawling industrial estate.

And where wartime aircraft such as Oxfords and Ansons once chugged along trying to get airborne, traffic rushes past at greater speeds.

But it wasn't always like that ­ although RAF Watchfield did not exist in 1938.

It was a true wartime airfield ­ built for a specific purpose and then closed down when the conflict ended.

And during those few short years the pilots helped pioneer a new navigational system which allowed aircraft to land in previously impossibly bad weather conditions.

The airfield was created from open farm fields on the outskirts of Shrivenham and was operational between 1939 and 1946 as part of RAF Training Command.

The number of people who served there grows less every year and few local people will now recall the once busy airfield.

But 86-year-old Fred Guilmant can still recall those far off, almost unreal days with a vivid clarity.

And to make sure that the name of RAF Watchfield will live on, he has produced a booklet commemorating the role of the airfield.

His journal, which is a personal record of wartime happenings in an around Watchfield and Shrivenham, is illustrated by several of the black and white photographs which Fred took while serving there as flying instructor.

The former Flt Lt only decided to put pen to paper after finding an old photo album while clearing out his garage.

Fred said: "Rather than consign them to the dustbin I thought I would write a few notes and give them to a library and eventually the notes developed into a booklet."

The airfield was provided by the RAF but a private company who were specialists in training pilots in instrument flying was responsible for much of its operation.

Fred was already a qualified pilot when he arrived at Watchfield in early 1942.

He and the other Watchfield instructors were renowned through the RAF for their flying skills and several of them were later co-opted for special flying duties such as the famous Pathfinder Squadron.

Watchfield led the way in the development of a highly classified "beam" method of navigation which meant at times when the weather was bad their planes were the only aircraft flying in the whole of the UK.

Fred said: "Thick fog was never an obstacle. In fact the thicker the fog, the more our instructor pilots wanted to take off."

But he also admitted: "At times during practice your life and the life of your crew depended on you being calm and very collected in circumstances where you were fully entitled to be scared stiff."

Often Fred and his fellow pilots were called to ferry patients for emergency treatment at the former medical centre at RAF Wroughton, when in his words, even the birds weren't flying.

He said: "The flying control bods there were very angry ­ but so what? Nobody else was airborne, so the area must have been all clear, and anyway, we'd got a sick patient on board who needed urgent treatment.

"Often there were argy-bargy's about taking off again, but we simply got in and climbed away in the direction we were facing. Because we landed back at base again safely, there was little point in making a fuss about procedures."

Living conditions at Watchfield were adequate, but Fred says people living locally must have suffered as student pilots did continuous "circuits" and "bumps" along set paths created by navigational beams.

"The locals were very patient with their acceptance of a wartime situation where aircraft made night-time quite noisy with their low flying," said Fred.

"For four years there was constant flying up and down this narrow aerial way for up to 23 hours a day.

"Training went on day and night whatever the weather, and an essential part of this was to allow pupil pilots to virtually crash, with the instructor only taking recovery action at the last possible moment at around 100 feet above the ground.

"Bad weather gave no relief, in fact, the worse the weather, the more instructors wanted to fly. It was the dearest wish of every pilot to have flown successfully and safely when literally even the birds were not airborne. We took off and landed when you could not see the ground ahead."

Trainee pilots had to complete 140 hours flying time before they were awarded their `wings'.

They then spent time with a training unit and then moved onto an operational squadron.

RAF Watchfield never had a concrete runway. It was all grass and during the winter large parts of the field were unusable due to the mud and pools of standing water.

Without doubt the Watchfield pilots regularly put their lives at risk but Fred insists that that was all part of the job.

He had his own near-misses in the air and also remembers the summer day when he was caught up in a sudden summer electrical storm.

He managed to land in winds of up to 90mph at RAF Brize Norton and ended up in a potato patch at the end of the runway.

When he got back to Watchfield he saw how the storm had ripped the roofs off of cottages, flooded fields and blew several aircraft upside down.

There were other things apart from pilot training that went on at RAF Watchfield.

A Flt Lt Battersby regularly flew low level missions to the east coast and across the North Sea searching for the `beams' the Germans used to direct their bombers to British targets.

It eventually came to light that the pilot had actually reported a beam targeting the devastated city of Coventry which the Air Ministry had deliberately ignored.

Fred said: "Years later I read that Churchill himself had vetoed disclosing that target because Bletchley Park had reported the same target from code messages deciphered by their Enigma machine.

"Churchhill believed that by disclosing we knew the target in advance would indicate to the Germans we had indeed broken that code."

Fred, who was awarded the Air Force Cross in 1944, has recorded a wealth of stories about his time at Watchfield.

Copies of Fred's booklet ­ "RAF Watchfield, which was born, lived and then died during the war years of 1939 to 1946" is available at public libraries.

Fred can be contacted by writing to 187, West End Road, Southampton.

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