It’s a little over three years ago since I last visited Coltishall. I recently did a recent visit back and took @V50jake with me as we had never met and he wanted to see it. I mainly wanted to go back too see the two jet testers. When we got to indoor one someone had chucked a ton of wood in there, mainly in the machine that holds the engine for testing into the exhaust duct. So we decided to give it a miss. We then went to look at the out door one further over. This was my third time seeing it, and it’s still as impressive as ever. It was nicer that it was a nice warm day, last time I went was on a cold January day with icy wind blowing across. Me and man gone wrong was absolutely frozen.
Raf Coltishall is a former RAF airbase. It was built in 1939 with the outbreak of war and was originally built as a bomber station. But plans were changed and it opened in 1940 as a fighter base. It hosted Hawker Hurricanes, then later became a night fighter station. They used Supermarime Spitfire IX HF’s which were used for bombing the V2 launch sites in northern France.
pit was used extensively during the Cold War. It was designated as a Vbomber dispersal site in the 50s. The Vulcan,Valiantand Victor could be flown there if the home station was damaged in an attack.
The last planes used at Coltishall was the Jaguars, these saw service in the Gulf War. The search and rescue coast helicopters were based there also. When the Jaguars were to be replaced by the newer Typhoon Eurofighter, Coltishall lost out on being a base for them. It finally closed in November 2006, and was the last of the Battle Of Britain fighter base to close.
The site was taken over by Norfolk County Council. It’s now used by several businesses. Since my last visit a lot of buildings have now been put into use and some demolished. The jets testers are of the virtually same design. One is next to a large building which use to fix the engines and then when it was ready it would be takemn to the indoor one and placed in a clamping machine and monitored. The outdoor one is further away on the taxiway sat in one of the pens between two massive solid blast walls. The planes could reverse up to them, two chocks were placed to give them the right spacing. Not sure if this was actually for testing faulty engines . Or for some other purpose maybe when they landed or before they took off.
Raf Coltishall is a former RAF airbase. It was built in 1939 with the outbreak of war and was originally built as a bomber station. But plans were changed and it opened in 1940 as a fighter base. It hosted Hawker Hurricanes, then later became a night fighter station. They used Supermarime Spitfire IX HF’s which were used for bombing the V2 launch sites in northern France.
pit was used extensively during the Cold War. It was designated as a Vbomber dispersal site in the 50s. The Vulcan,Valiantand Victor could be flown there if the home station was damaged in an attack.
The last planes used at Coltishall was the Jaguars, these saw service in the Gulf War. The search and rescue coast helicopters were based there also. When the Jaguars were to be replaced by the newer Typhoon Eurofighter, Coltishall lost out on being a base for them. It finally closed in November 2006, and was the last of the Battle Of Britain fighter base to close.
The site was taken over by Norfolk County Council. It’s now used by several businesses. Since my last visit a lot of buildings have now been put into use and some demolished. The jets testers are of the virtually same design. One is next to a large building which use to fix the engines and then when it was ready it would be takemn to the indoor one and placed in a clamping machine and monitored. The outdoor one is further away on the taxiway sat in one of the pens between two massive solid blast walls. The planes could reverse up to them, two chocks were placed to give them the right spacing. Not sure if this was actually for testing faulty engines . Or for some other purpose maybe when they landed or before they took off.
