The School of Army Aviation History

With the great expansion of Army Aviation in 1964, the structure of the Army Air Corps changed. This led to changes of organisation and the School of Army Aviation was formed in August 1965. This incorporated Flying Wing, the Trade Training School from Technical Wing, and the ground instruction part of Tactics Wing, under its own Commandant.



(In 1973, the School was closed down again, and the post of Commandant was transferred, first to the Center as the Deputy Commandant and ultimately as Colonel GS of HQ Director Army Air Corps, the wings being commanded by the Center Commandant direct as before.) Aircraft servicing remained under the control of REME through the other half of the Technical Wing, now referred to again as Aircraft Branch (its original title was Aircraft Servicing Branch, although for a long time it was called Aircraft Technical Servicing Unit), and the units’ workshops.

651 Squadron moved away to Netheravon, the second Army Air Corps aerodrome on Salisbury Plain, in 1964, having returned from Feltwell soon after the change to Army Air Corps. Netheravon had been the home of 3 Squadron, the first fully operational Squadron of the RFC in 1913, having been formed from the Air Battalion RE at Larkhill; the Army had indeed returned to its grass roots. 651 was the nucleus for the formation of the headquarters to command Army Aviation in the UK, and kept the title alive until 1969 when it passed to a squadron in Germany and the new structure of regiments superseded the existing system.



A major rebuild commenced in late 1966 at Middle Wallop, to meet the new expansion, changed the face of the station considerably. Many of the SECO huts, built for the Control and Reporting School, were demolished to make way for the new instructional block which was to be named Stockwell Hall after the first Colonel-Commandant of the Army Air Corps. The Messes were extended, additional estates of married quarters were built, the street names reflecting army airfields on the officers quarters and trees and aircraft types in the soldiers quarters.

Many redundant buildings were removed and protective blast walls demolished around the fighter operations block and station headquarters building, which also had the protective ballast removed from its flat roof, as the weight was affecting the foundations!

On the airfield, the blast protection bays for fighter aircraft were removed except for one pair adjacent to the bomb dump. The hollow walls were used for air-raid protection, but are now deteriorating badly; a number of pre-cast machine-gun pits also remain. Simply large concrete sewer pipes sunk into the ground with a central machine-gun mounting, they were crude, but very effective. Air-raid shelters were sealed off or filled in, except for those below the messes and the barrack blocks. Knockwood reverted to its wild state, several blister hangars were removed, and gradually the access roads and spaces are filling in: soon all traces will have disappeared. The WT transmitting station has long since gone, the original building having been demolished in the 1970s.

The battle headquarters in the sports field has become derelict, but enough remains to indicate how seriously station defence was taken in the difficult days following the fall of France. The original battle headquarters was revealed recently when a section of the airfield began to cave in. When excavated, the original pillbox came to light, having been buried when the airfield was extended towards the Kentsboro-Stockbridge road in 1941. Below the pillbox was a small operations room with sunken access steps and escape shafts. It was discovered originally in the days of 288 Squadron, when a Balliol was wrecked when it sank into the soft ground on landing.



Another peculiarity of airfield defence thinking was found in 1980. Unknown to the current inhabitants of the airfield, three underground forts had been built into the landing ground, two of which had been known to station firemen for years, having discovered them during early morning mushroom forays on the airfield!

A six-foot diameter concrete disc, flush with the surface, with a small steel plate for access, had been part of the takeoff and landing runs for thousands of aircraft since 1941. Lifting the access flap revealed a tiny, circular chamber some 5 feet in diameter, the centre of which was filled by a very large hydraulic jack, pump and oil reservoir. A ledge, set up on concrete pillars half way down, formed a seat for the garrison of three under command of an NCO linked by field telephone to Battle Headquarters.

If the station was attacked, the fort could be hydraulically raised up out of the ground some 2 feet, which uncovered three apertures in the concrete structure, through which they could fire their guns. Originally intended to be operated by compressed air from a storage ‘bottle, the hydraulic pump was a standby installation, but although it required a lot of effort to operate, this became the accepted method of operation. Fortunately, the claustrophobic, uncomfortable and unpopular installations were never used in anger.