RAF Molesworth - History

History

  • Bob Hope entertained base personnel on 6 July 1943.
  • American journalist and news correspondent Walter Cronkite flew on a 303d Bombardment Group mission while reporting the war.
  • American servicemen from RAF Molesworth married more English women during World War II than servicemen from any other American base in England.
  • During the early 1980s, Molesworth was completely rebuilt. All of the World War II runways, taxiways, bomber hardstandings, as well as a 9,000 ft jet runway laid down in the 1950s were removed. Crumbling buildings, mostly from the 1950s were also demolished and removed. The only surviving remnants of the World War II era are two T.2 hangars and one J-Type hangar on the former airfield. A cluster of wartime buildings, including Nissen huts exist just east of the facility, at the intersection of the B660 and Brington Road at the edge of the town of Old Weston. 52°22′49.68″N 000°23′37.97″W / 52.3804667°N 0.3938806°W / 52.3804667; -0.3938806
  • A monument to the 303rd BG resides just inside the main entrance to the base and is accessible to the public.

Read more about this topic:  RAF Molesworth

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    “All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
    —Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)

    “The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
    —Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)