Friday 17 July 2015

Stop the Traffic! We Want to Take Off!


During the early part of the Battle of Britain, entries in the Campaign Diaries frequent mention is made of RAF Catterick in 13 Group being unserviceable.

Even when it was serviceable there was often a caveat saying "unserviceable during hours of darkness".

What could be the reason for the unreliable nature of this 13 Group Sector Station?

There is no explanation in the Campaign Diaries and there is no mention of any bomb damage putting it out of action.

I can not find any mention of it being an unreliable aerodrome or for being famous for its poor weather record.

RAF Catterick would appear to have only a single runway and I wondered if it might have been prone to flooding but I couldn't find any mention of it anywhere and let's face it...IT'S JULY...even in Scotland!

In summary, I'm not convinced that Catterick's poor serviceability record at the beginning of the Battle of Britain was either due to the weather or due to enemy action.

For me the most plausible reason occurred to me when I read an article in the Wartime Memories Project and it stated that:

The runway at Catterick was so close to the A1 that traffic had to be stopped to allow Spitfires to take off

For me, this would explain why it was unserviceable so often...in those days the A-roads were the main transport trunk roads, there were no motorways (unlike in Germany where Hitler had realised the benefit of a good road system to a mechanised army). So I think the RAF might have wanted to disrupt traffic on the A1 as few times as possible.

It also presumably meant that a Squadron Scramble order would have had a slower response, because you would have had to stop the traffic first.

If I was the RAF in the day, I'm sure I'd have thought, "If we've got any other options, let's try and not use Catterick!"

I think this might also explain why, even when Catterick was serviceable it was unserviceable during the hours of darkness...trying to stop traffic during the hours of darkness during a Blackout where none of the cars are allowed bright enough headlights...would be a positively dangerous occupation.

I'm guessing as the Battle of Britain intensified though, priorities changed and Catterick would have been used more and more...and somehow dealt with the traffic issues.

This is only my conjecture but it does allow for the historical interpretation that:

far from Catterick being frequently broken, I believe that instead it may have been frequently operational but just too close to the A1

...and the British being British, the RAF may have thought that to fly too often from Catterick would have been dreadfully inconsiderate...until later in the Battle of course when Catterick did tremendous work. 

by Steve Dunster

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