Britain's longest aircraft runway ?

[TvrTone]

RAF Sculthorpe in Norfolk.

06/24 12,000 ft 3,658m

Still maintained by the military. Very interesting history.

[alangla]

Celtic Dragon said:

Mildenhall has to be up there too, they landed Air Force One on it!

Bah, you don't need a long runway for a Jumbo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPJiOareZnA

Hurn airport, 7451ft/2271m according to Wiki

Can't find a video, but various sources on the web say that BA 747-400s landed at Cambridge airport during the late 90s for work at Marshall Aerospace. Cambridge is only 6446 ft long according to Wikipedia...

[dictys]

RAF Ascension Island 3054m , was also a shuttle landing place, I do remember a building with a large model of the shuttle on top of it.

[jontysafe]

Part of the runway at Machrihanish has now been decommissioned as it makes it cheaper to maintain, that and the shuttle has been decommissioned too. Flown in and out of there many times. Both in flybe's twin otter and saab.

[marcosgt]

Interesting, but all the supposed Shuttle abort sites coming up here are starting to remind of the number of ex-SF soldiers you encounter these days

M.

[McHaggis]

It did land at Stanstead, on the back of a 747...

http://londonist.com/2010/03/the_day_the_space_shu...

[tuffer]

Ginetta G15 Girl said:

tuffer said:

Boscombe may be long but its far from flat and the approach is a bit dodgy (at least it looks it to me), big hill right in front of it.

I've never had an issue landing at Boscombe.

In a Space shuttle?

[Eric Mc]

If a Shuttle was in dire emergency, ANY airfield with a decent runway was on their list as long as it was reachable once the de-orbit burn had been performed. As I said earlier, all these "Shuttle Emergency Airfields" were very, very unlikely to ever to have been used, even if they had managed 2,000 missions as originally planned.

The only genuinely contemplated emergency airfields were those at the end of Trans Atlantic Abort scenarios.

[DJFish]

What about Bentwaters?
Isnt that quite a good size?

[Eric Mc]

DJFish said:

What about Bentwaters?
Isnt that quite a good size?

You might as well name every decent runway in the UK at this rate. ALL longish runways were useable in an extreme emergency.

RAF Woodbridge (very close to Bentwaters) was the home of the USAF 67th Air Refueling and Reconnaissance Squadron (67th ARRS) and they had had an emergency role in the US space programme since the early 1960s.
I visited there in 1987 and tucked away in the corner of the airfield, under the trees, was a dummy boilerplate Apollo Command Module. We were told that the 67th ARRS Jolly Green Giant helicopters were on standby during every Apollo launch in case they had to fly to the rescue of a capsule which had made an emergency splashdown in the Atlantic.

[Pork]

Sgt Bilko said:

Pork said:

Sgt Bilko said:

It would take a while to shift all the cars stored there.

Slightly O/T, but what are all those doing there? Are they all one make? That must take some organisation!

Waiting for buyers. Your new car "off the line" isn't always "off the line". It's been sat rusting quietly on an airfield for a few months waiting for someone to purchase it. It takes a month to dig it out and clean it up again. Last i saw there were a few makes and models. Vauxhall IIRC was the main one but i was a few years ago i was there. If there are any Thames Valley Police on here (Response drivers/Dog units/Firearms or Public Order officers) they may be able to advise better.

Thanks for the reply. I had a look on Google Maps - there's certainly some metal there!

[DJFish]

Eric Mc said:

dummy boilerplate Apollo Command Module.

Rumoured to be the cause of the UFO conspiracy theories from that area....

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

Pork said:

Slightly O/T, but what are all those doing there? Are they all one make? That must take some organisation!

At one time Folkingham near Bourne in Lincs (ex BRM test centre) was covered in cars), as was Swinderby, and Sandtoft in S Yorks.

The latter was covered in 'new' BMWs.

[Eric Mc]

DJFish said:

Eric Mc said:

dummy boilerplate Apollo Command Module.

Rumoured to be the cause of the UFO conspiracy theories from that area....

It had a big circular hoop on the top - making it look like a full size toy. The capsule was regularly dangled from a chopper when practising ocean recovery techniques.

I wonder where it ended up?

[Vieste]

Surprised it lasted as long as it did in the lounge.

[Eric Mc]

And probably will grind to a halt now that it's been marginalised.

Oh well, that's modern PH.

[griffdude]

Ascension was a shuttle div. There were some huge cranes down on the US base that were rumoured to be used to lift it onto the back of a 74. Also the US base commander was something to do with NASA I seem to remember.

[Eric Mc]

They do, seven times steeper than an airliner. They also required a microwave landing system to ensure they lined up properly with the runway and assumed the correct descent angle. Energy management in the terminal phase of flight was utterly crucial to getting a Shuttle down safely.

I doubt if any of the diversionary airfields had any of the landing aids normally used by the Shuttle. Getting one on the ground safely at any of these would have required very good piloting skill and probably an element of luck too.

[miln0039]

john2443 said:

Heathrow 3901m according to Wiki.

Erm, I was going to say this. That's longer than anything else quoted in the UK so far, or am I being thick and missing something? (Eric?)

[Eric Mc]

What do you think you might be missing?