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:

    “For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
    —F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    “The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
    —William James (1842–1910)

    “What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which would be in harmony with the scenery,—for if men read aright, methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)