| September saw me visiting RAF Shawbury.It's 2 main activities are training helicopter aircrew and air traffic controllers. The station also has a number of ancillary tasks, the most important of which is to store aircraft.
Resident flying unit is the Defence Helicopter Flying School, equipped with the Eurocopter Squirrel HT1 and Bell Griffin HT1, The unit provides basic and advanced single-engine helicopter training for pilots of the 3 Services, and advanced twin-engine helicopter training for RAF pilots, crewmen and navigators. The main non-flying unit is the Central Air Traffic Control School, which trains air traffic controllers and assistants for the RAF and Royal Navy. The Aircraft Storage Unit's task is to prepare and store fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters at varying states of readiness as part of the fatigue-life management strategy for the RAF's front-line aircraft and training fleet. Currently Shawbury is seeing an influx of Gazelles's which are being stored.Other aircraft in storage are Tucano's, Hawk's, Jaguar's, Sea harrier's and AAC AH-64 Apache's. RAF Shawbury runs has an excellent system of visits to see the stored aircraft, see the Shawbury website for further details. |
TUCANO ZF373 3072x2048 |
HAWK 3072x2048 |
SEA HARRIER 3072x2048 |
TUCANO ZF245 3072x2048 |
TUCANO ZF413 3072x2048 |
NEW ARRIVAL GAZELLE 3072x2048 |
TUCANO ZF208 3072x2048 |
STORED GAZELLE'S 3072x2048 |
SQUIRREL ZJ259 3072x2048 |
APACHE 3072x2048 |
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