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Elmdon Airport

I remember that club in Elmdon Lane. The other club near the old airport entrance was more fun. Serious drinking with aircrew and engineers.
 
oldMowhawk - re your post No.223, 14 March and the GKN Beechcraft. I had the "pleasure" of a round trip to Edinburgh in that plane in 1981. We took off in a howling gale and landed like a fluttering leaf at Turnhouse. They closed the airport to further flights after that. Our return journey was not much better. Thank goodness for the very professional pilots employed by GKN on that day. It has remained a very special memory for me. Thanks for posting the picture. Regards. willey
 
Elmdon Boy said:
Hello All
New to this forum having only recently moved into the 21st century by purchasing a computer.
Love the photos and reports from Elmdon Airport as I still prefer to know it by.
I used to live down near the Wheatsheaf just off Old Load Lane and spent many a happy day aircraft spotting at Elmdon during the 1960s. In fact I'm still an aircraft enthusiast to this day though not as a spotter. Once its in your blood it never goes away.
In answer to a few of the previous threads, the old battle headquarters which is still there is a typical design which was built at many military airfields during WW2 and due to the fact they were built mainly underground still exist at many old airfields around the country, although usually totally overgrown with brambles and filled with water. Pertentualy very dangerous places to explore. If you wish to see one that's fully restored and available to look round, go to Wellesbourne Mountford airfield near Stratford on Avon at the Wellesbourne Wartime Museum, open every Sunday and bank holiday Monday. The battle Headquarters were there to move airfield operations to if the airfield came under attack from the enemy, also as a means of defending the airfield from ground attack if the country was invaded. There would have been facilities to stay there for a few days.
The other point raised was the Warwick club. There was the Warwickshire Aero Club, this was in one of the old Nissan style huts close to the public enclosure. During the time around 1966 they had a disco night on a Friday and called the club Angels 1, 5, for that event only. I went during this time,
it had a good atmosphere, but was very small, it didn't last long. Could this be the club referred to.
Next door at the other Nissan hut at around the same time the local aircraft spotters formed a club
which produced a monthly magazine called Contrail. It was started by a councillor from I believe Small Heath named Barry Chair. I was a member of this club, don't think the members from the Aero club next door appreciated the presence of us riff raff though. Ah happy days.
Anybody out there remember, and was also perhaps a member of the spotters club.
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G'day Elmdon boy, do you still have your BSA Bantam!!!
I have posted a couple of messages in conversations about the old days
 
fisho said:
G'day Elmdon boy, do you still have your BSA Bantam!!!
I have posted a couple of messages in conversations about the old days
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Hi fisho
I've read your messages in conversations, how did you suss out it was me.
Yes I remember you, and your messages bring back happy memories.
I have plenty to reminisce about with you just as soon as I work out how to leave messages in conversations.
They tell me its an age thing.
Can you help me out.
 
Does anybody remember the airport police at the time I was a spotter 1961 to 1967.
The pain in our hobby. Sometimes they were OK, sometimes they would stop you going up to the spiral staircase to the viewing platform overlooking domestic apron and hanger one. Why, after all this was a public viewing area.
Then they would sometimes throw us spotters out of the viewing lounge in the then new building, overlooking the international apron,telling us to go back to the public enclosure,regardless of the weather outside. Once again why, after all this was a public viewing lounge. Of course at the time we just complied not knowing any difference, but I don't think in retrospect they had any right to if we were behaving ourselves. I think it was just a case of flexing there authority because there was nothing else to do at that time. Elmdon was a sleepy place then.

There was the Sarge, big rotund figure with ruddy complexion, generally one you hoped wouldn't be on duty. Cush he was generally OK, The Walrus long dropping moustache. Anybody remember the names of others.

Do you remember trying to avoid detection whilst sneaking around hanger one.Walk up the side of the wall along the roadway going out of airport by hanger one to Hanger road. Quick look to see if anyone's looking, into Hanger road, under the metal barrier by the top corner, through the swinging doors into a short corridor and out through another set of swinging doors into the corner of hanger one by TI Heron G-ANPV. Then a reverse out, and hope you hadn't been spotted. What bad lads we were.
The Heron by the way was sold in Australia, and today is under restoration at a aircraft museum in Sydney.
 
I have the dubious reputation of actually being escorted off an aircraft by the Airport Police and not as part of a stag party going to Benidorm. At the time I was very friendly with a senior engineer of Orion airlines and he found out I was going to Jersey with a group of people that I worked with. We had all taken our seats when the Police came on board and I was pointed out by the crew (who were part of the joke). The police took me off and there was my pal with a grin ear to ear. Try explaining that away to work colleagues. Probably couldnt happen nowadays.
 
When you think about it, to have only one, perhaps two airport police on duty in the sixties,
compared to today, how times have changed!
Cushy was a friendly irish cop, who I think wanted things to go along nice and easy, if he was on duty with a newish cop you were ok, but if he was on with Sarge, he would have to be seen to be doing his job, and turfing you out into the public enclosure.
I think there were 10 airport police, and most of them we would identify them by their numbers.
 
I remember being banned from the airport by one airport police, this would have been in probably 1961, aged 12.
The crime,playing on the airport lift in the old building, the one that went down to departures, and up to probably the met offices, entered from the viewing balcony immediately on the right hand side. It had a cage like sliding door which you could see in and out of.
Well me and my mate decided to take it in turns going up and down and pretend we were monkeys in a cage,making noises and movements like an ape. We were having a great time until on the one desent AP--- was waiting for us.
Punishment, banned from the airport , well as if. Such bad boys.
 
ELM 1.jpg Elm 2.jpg Elm 3.png
I used to go with a couple of friends when we were 10 or 12 years old to watch the aircraft arrive and or leave. I was never a plane spotter, I have never left the ground in an aircraft and I never will.
 
Stitcher said:
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I used to go with a couple of friends when we were 10 or 12 years old to watch the aircraft arrive and or leave. I was never a plane spotter, I have never left the ground in an aircraft and I never will.
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Stitcher, my mother had the same thoughts as you about flying, she would say"if the lord had wanted us to fly he would have given us wings", well the first time mom and dad flew to Texas to visit me in 1963 she said there is no other way to go....can'nt say dad felt the same way though....Brenda
 
Don't know where I got this from but I like the image because the building actually looks like a plane from this angle. Viv.
 

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Coming back to the Airport Police mentioned in earlier posts. The airport had its own police force until May 1976 when policing at the airport was taken over by West Midlands Police. At the time the airport police had 29 members but only 2 of them transferred to the West Midlands Police. The remainder were offered jobs in security at the airport.
 
brenda barr said:
Stitcher, my mother had the same thoughts as you about flying, she would say"if the lord had wanted us to fly he would have given us wings", well the first time mom and dad flew to Texas to visit me in 1963 she said there is no other way to go....can'nt say dad felt the same way though....Brenda
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Hello Brenda, sorry about the delay but I am always trying to do too many things at the same time.
Let me tell you it would take an at of God to get me up in a airplane because I hate heights and could not live in a high rise flat or work on scaffolding.
 
Very nostalgic pictures stitcher. Thanks for the postings. Takes my memory back, particularly the last photo.
Obviously 1965 or slightly later by the car registration, probably a Sunday looking at the number of spotters on the viewing balcony. I wonder if I am one of them.
 
As previously mentioned about air displays at Elmdon the one on the Whit Holiday 29th May 1953 was organised by the the Birmingham Mail as part of city's Coronation celebrations. In the 1950s most people attending air shows expected to hear fighter jets breaking the sound barrier and two U.S.A.F. F86 Sabre jets duly obliged by diving at the airfield to create the sonic bangs. They then went on with high speed flights across the airfield before landing. The pic below shows the two jets behind the pilots.
Sabre.JPG
 
Elmdon Boy said:
Very nostalgic pictures stitcher. Thanks for the postings. Takes my memory back, particularly the last photo.
Obviously 1965 or slightly later by the car registration, probably a Sunday looking at the number of spotters on the viewing balcony. I wonder if I am one of them.
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That one brings memories back to me as well Elmdon Boy because I was a taxi driver using mainly the airport rank in those days.
 
That's an interesting photo oldMohawk. Is it a paper photo or one of yours. Never seen a photo of the two Sabres on the ground before. Looks like there parked on the grass as well. Got any more to share from the 50s.
 
Elmdon Boy said:
That's an interesting photo oldMohawk. Is it a paper photo or one of yours. Never seen a photo of the two Sabres on the ground before. Looks like there parked on the grass as well. Got any more to share from the 50s.
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Hi, Elmdon Boy, no it is not one of my own photos. I suppose I'm one of the forum's aviation enthusiasts ... it probably came from watching my dad building model aeroplanes when he came home from work at the Castle Bromwich Spitfire factory.
I have many aviation related posts scattered across the forum and you might have seen my earlier post#108 about the only air show I saw at Elmdon in 1949. But it was at Castle Bromwich where I first heard the sound barrier broken over Brum and of course I posted about that in the 'Air Displays Castle Bromwich Airfield thread'.
With regard to photos, a Birmingham photographer took one of an aircraft supposedly in a Birmingham street and we never found it ... and we certainly tried ... some pics of a scrap aircraft at Elmdon crept into that thread which is here 'Does anyone know which street this airplane body is being transported in?'.
oldmohawk
 
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After the display and landing of the two U.S.A.F. Sabre jets mentioned in post#262, eight Sabres were to fly over and the Tannoy was switched into the flight leader's radio transmission who reported they had they field in view and were beginning a run in but no aircraft appeared. Silence for 30 seconds was followed by an apologetic radio message from "Sabre Leader" saying "Sorry, wrong field." They had apparently started a display at the nearby disused and deserted RAF Hockley Heath airfield much to the surprise of Hockley Heath residents but eventually found Elmdon and made two high speed precision formation runs.
 
Yet another two interesting photos you've got oldMohawk. Where are you finding them.
Hockley Heath was used during the war for training glider pilots using Miles Master tug aircraft, and Hotspur assault gliders. It opened in 1941. It was initially used as a relief landing ground for No 2 Central flying school who's base was Church Lawford near Coventry using Airspeed Oxfords and Avro Tutors. North American Harvard's used it in mid 1945.
It was abandoned as an airfield in 1948.
I believe at one time it was considered for the site of Birminghams airport before they chose Elmdon.
The site is on the A3400 going out of Shirley, over the M42, onwards towards Stratford on Avon, past Box trees craft farm, around the roundabout by the petrol station, continue on A3400 and the fields on your immediate right are the site. As you will see, very flat.

That photo of Elmdon must be the earliest I've ever seen. Hanger 2 has not been built and hardly any other buildings.
Up on the A45 it appears the Airport Hotel is being constructed. Now the Holiday Inn.
Looks like two Tiger Moths plus three Miles Magisters in front of Hanger 1, now demolished.
Note building in top right corner, this is the Elmdon rectory which was later converted to flats.
I remember helping my mate out on his paper round delivering papers to here in about 1962 from Kings newsagent on the Tigers Island parade of shops by Rangoon Road.
 
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