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:

    A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.
    Aristide Briand (1862–1932)

    There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.
    Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)

    Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.
    —G.M. (George Macaulay)