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Come see it as it is now
Read a brief 'Thor' history
 
Chris Webb recalls his time at Feltwell with Thor
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RAF Feltwell -A Thor Missile Base

The Thor Rocket Station in No. 3 Group opened in June 1958.
"Welcome Brochure" here

The detour continues to the Tower Mill

 

THOR MISSILE NOW IN SERVICE WITH THE R.A.F.
Daily Telegraph and Morning Post, Friday, February 12, 1960 
The better quality photos are taken from originals kindly provided by Cambridge Evening News

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A ROCKET AND ITS CREW
The officers and men who form the launch crew standing in front of a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile at the R.A.F. Station, Feltwell, Norfolk.  Bomber Command's Thor force is now operational and will complete its build-up to a strength of 60 missiles by the middle of the year.  The crew includes R.A.F. police with guard dogs which patrol the area.  The 65ft-high missile, supplied by the United States, carries a nuclear warhead in the megaton range.
LAUNCHING DRILL
The Thor missile, designed to be held at 15 minutes' readiness or less, is housed in a protective shelter which is drawn back on rails.
Top: The shelter being retracted to reveal the missile, and (right) the rocket completely exposed and being raised into the firing position.
The missile almost in the vertical position during a practice "countdown" at Feltwell

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CHECKING THE CLAMPS
Master Navigator Lachlan Brown, of Falkirk, Stirlingshire, checking the clamps at the base of the missile after it had been raised to the firing position.

Chief Tech, Norman Clamp, of Southport, checking a propulsion unit.thor3d.jpg (58799 bytes)  cen1.jpg (31201 bytes)

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Simon Trevor-Wright has reported that his late father, F/Sgt. Archie George Wright, was posted to Feltwell in January 1959 and worked in the RIM building. Together with his wife Catherine they lived at 1, Wellington Road. Archie was promoted to Warrant Officer in October 1960 and remained at Feltwell until the Thor missiles departed in July 1963.

 

 

I liked my time at Feltwell, it was very USAF orientated, I was in the Supply Squadron in number 2 hanger between the MT hanger and the RIM building. My section was called EDP, short for electronic data processing where all the spares were ordered from the States via IBM punch cards and teleprinter. USAF were miles ahead of RAF in supply terms.

I remember the pubs in the village, some were better than others. We used the West End a lot as it was at the base gates and also the Oak at the other end of the village. The first time I had a beefburger was in there, it was run by an ex-USAF feller. Some Thursday nights saw us at either Lakenheath or Mildenhall as it was “10 cent night”. Change your money at the PX, have a game of 10-pin with a burger and fries, then airmen’s club for a drink or two – bourbon, Coors, Schlitz etc. Linford Hall was another place we went for dancing and looking for girls.

I was lucky to be attached to a USAF Top Tech Sergeant called Ernie Bish when the missiles were being shipped back to Vandenburg AFB in California. I went to all the squadrons,77 Feltwell, 82 Shepherd’s Grove, 107 Tuddenham, 113 Mepal and 220 Nth Pickenham, prepared the paperwork and then we used to go to Mildenhall to see them being loaded onto C-124s or C-133s.

Anything you want to know just ask and I’ll try to answer your questions with pleasure. Not a lot of people know about Thor, which is a shame, it was a good deterrent for its time. The B and W photo is of a warhead trailer towed by a Leyland Hippo tractor unit. These Leylands were used for towing the missile trailers and also compressed nitrogen trailers to and from BOC, Bilston, Staffs. Originally USAF units were used with RAF registration plates to keep the locals happy as some folk didn’t like the idea of the US planting nuclear missiles in Eastern England. The RAF drivers hated them apparently.

I can still remember the porters at Ely station shouting “Shippea Hill, Lakenheath, Brandon, Thetford, Attleborough, Wymondham and Norwich train”. Happy days.

I remember the panic at Feltwell running up to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. I was on nights that week and there was a “bird” in the RIM Building being serviced. Spares were required and one particular item was not available in the UK. We would phone the other bases for a stock check, the nearest first. It was flown in by PanAm direct into Mildenhall. TWA used Mildenhall as well for troop carrying purposes. It was the only time I saw all three missiles erected on 77 Squadron launch pads across from my section. There were officers all over the place and loads of civilian staff as well, most of them local people. I remember our Squadron Leader having a fag outside in the dark and muttering summat like “there’s only one 4 o clock and that’s in the afternoon”

I used to hitch hike to my home town of Sheffield on my days off and coming back often got lifts in lorries at night from the north going to Suffolk and Essex. They would use the back road via Brandon rather than the A134 via Thetford and would drop me off at the road for Feltwell, about a two mile walk in the dark to camp. You could see the launch pads lit up and they looked so menacing in that artificial light.

When I got married in 1962, we had a flat on Mill Road, Cambridge and I would hitch hike to camp. I was never late, even in that bad 1962/63 winter. Usually, a lift to Barton Mills in lorries and then very often the dog handler’s shift change wagon from 82 Sqdn Shepherd’s Grove would stop for me. The smell was unbelievable, but a third-class ride was better than a first-class walk. When the “ban the bomb” marches were going on in 1963 I was on duty on a Saturday, waiting for a lift back to Cambridge at Barton Mills. A car stopped and there were three ban the bombers in it who had been to RAF Marham demonstrating, but they had no issue in giving me a lift to Newmarket, strange? There was a layby outside Lakenheath base and hitch hikers, RAF and USAF, would just stand there until somebody stopped. I’ve had lifts with generals, captains, sergeants and airmen in owt from a VW Beetle to a De Soto, Cadillac, Lincoln, Chevrolet, you name it, and all on US plates. The Top Tech Sergeant I mentioned called Ernie Bish shared a flat with a luscious looking woman in Newmarket, a real stunner. He came to Feltwell one morning with various bruises and a black eye and it turned out he’d upset some stable lads in a Newmarket pub and they worked him over. I never ran out of fags or Bourbon whilst with Ernie, he was generous to a fault.

Just another thing that I have always remembered. We were in the Airmen’s Club at Lakenheath one “10 cent night” and talking to some USAF airmen. I asked one where he was from and he was a Mid-Western lad from Nebraska. I asked him what he thought of England and his answer was, “I have never been off this base, why should I, I’ve got my steaks, burgers, doughnuts, beer and whiskey and there nothing out there that will tempt me out of those gates. I have three months to do and can’t wait to get home and back in the wheatfields where I was brought up”.

They weren’t all like that, the ones I met at Feltwell were great lads, we used to have a good laugh and there was never any bother from either side. American civilians lived around the village, Douglas Aircraft Corp., AC Spark Plug and others I can’t recall worked on the pads and in the RIM Building.

There was a cafe or chip shop near the camp gates, I’m a bit hazy but I think it was called the Blade or something like it. A feller called Sid ran it, I think Environmental Health would have had a field day in there. But after a few pints of Steward and Patteson/Greene King/Bullards/Ely Ales/Tolly Cobbold who cared.

One more thing I recall was blokes giving Lakenheath porters pieces of cardboard at night that were same size as rail tickets, then away like a shot, RAF and USAF both. There was a train every Sunday night from Manchester to Norwich via Sheffield and it was very popular. I usually hitch hiked and flogged my travel warrants to Scottish lads, one I remember was from Stornoway and got three days travelling time to get home. One of the warehouse packers, Sandy, lived in King’s Lynn and he would drop me there about 1900 hrs and I would very often get lifts with Turners Transport from Norwich through to Grantham and then into a Manchester drivers wagon after a trailer change and be in Sheffield about 0300. Reverse order on a Sunday night. Turners’ main depot was at Soham and they are still going, in a big way.

I once went with a Feltwell MT driver in a Leyland Hippo with a nitrogen trailer to get to the A1 and home; I’d been on nights. He drove all the way in the middle of the Southery straight, it was a shocking piece of road and not really suitable for a heavy artic.

 

I’ve attached some photos that Ernie gave me. I’m a bit hazy, but I think they were taken at RAF Scampton, Lincs, which was the airhead for RAF Hemswell, another Thor station.

Official Secrets Act doesn’t apply. I have 4 books here about Thor, full of technical info.

All the photos on the right and the three below are from Chris.

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