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Aviation History
1954
1954 - 0389.PDF
12 February 1954 183 de Havilland Venom fighter I bombers are agile mounts, as the photograph on the left shows. On the right, one gets away from Wunstorf. Mow, the fastest and slowest machines in the air force, at Wildenrath; the Tiger is. a prized hack. R.A.F. have been its tenants for nearly nine years. But our next call was to be upon a very different airfield—the great new NATO base of Wildenrath, built during the past two years and home of the 2nd T.A.F.'s Sabre conversion flight, as well as various Venom and Sabre regular squadrons. Like most of the new NATO air fields, Wildenrath lies in the region of Germany's western frontier —in this case on the frontier with Holland. Once we had reached die autobahn, it was a matter of sitting back while the 2nd T.A.F, Volkswagen reeled off the kilometres, traversing the entire Ruhr in the process. It was dark when we arrived at Wildenrath and, although it was Sunday night, Sabres were in the circuit. Once beyond the guardroom, we began to appreciate the size of the place; we continued to drive for several minutes, through roads cut straight through the dense fir forest, before coming upon buildings recog nizable as such. We began to feel sorry for Wildenrath airmen on "jankers," picturing diem marching for hours in die rain on their way to the guardroom. Preliminary encounters with the few occupants of the officers' mess soon made it evident that we were guests of a highly effi cient and hard-working station, in the command of G/C. J. E. Johnson, D.S.O., D.F.C., the top^scoring R.A.F. pilot of die war. His is an exceptionally full-rime job, but he found time to talk to us the following morning. Of the Sabre itself, much has been written in this journal, and it suffices to say that those of 2nd T.A.F. are generally standard Sabre F.4s, with the General Electric J47. They mount six O.SOin guns, and are equipped to carry 16 rockets under the wings. The group captain had under his command a number of regular fighter squadrons, equipped with camouflaged Venoms, Sabre F.ls and F.4s, and also the dozen or so aircraft of the Sabre con version flight which, as the photographs show, are unpainted. They were, he said, thoroughly new, and the sturdiest aircraft he had ever known. The station had had Sabres for about three months at the time of our visit, and an 80 per cent serviceability record had been maintained, largely by cannibalizing other Sabres. "Now," said the CO., "proper spares backing is available, and we are flying them all day.* From G/C. Johnson and from squadron pilots we gathered that the Sabre is doing all that had been expected of it. Its controls Domestic attention for fighter (bomber Venoms at Wunstorf. ^W^ «aJL« fM „,. W [ • M. 1ZM- ^.f*#^ «;"*~~ fefe IH^^ :. Il^i - jfcj i A, a A ^y'- / krq i ill MJ rr, J&ft d-A« § i tjj i if | -in . ^S* IPCs ft ^*-*l!
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