RAF HARLAXTON

Decontamination Block

Lets as always start with some history.

RAF Harlaxton was a Royal Air Force station near the village of Harlaxton England.

RAF Harlaxton was built in 1916 and was in use for 41 years.

Originally constructed as a Royal Flying Corps aerodrome in Novemeber 1916 it closed between the wars, reopening in 1942 as a Royal Air Force flying training establishment until its final closure in 1957.

During the Second World War Harlaxton Manor was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force as the station's officers mess and later to temporarily house the headquarters of the 1st Airborne Division.

Incidents At Harlaxton

on 29th January 1945 a USAAF Dakota transport aircraft attempted a emergency landing it suffered major airframe damage during the incident. The aircraft was written off as the damage was beyond repair. the was only minor injures and no fatality's. 

UK bomb disposal teams were having continuing problems dealing with German 2 kilogram Butterfly bombs as no examples had been safely dismantled to learn the process. Whilst dealing with eight that had fallen on RAF Harlaxton and failed to explode, Flight Sergeant Hanford of RAF Bomb Disposal from nearby RAF Digby noticed that the arming rods had not fully withdrawn. He screwed them back by hand into the fuzes enabling the bomb disposal scientists to dismantle them and use them for instructional purposes.

This was an interesting explore although as we were leaving i looked through a break in the trees to what i believed was more buildings so we took a walk across a field to find more buildings and took us past the big manor house beautiful building.