A-7 Corsairs at Waddington 1985

[Fred Martin]

Photographed at Waddington in May 1985 , this was one of the largest deployments of the A-7 to the UK . Here for 4 weeks gave plenty of opportunity to shoot them in reasonably good weather although by far the best day was departure day when only my son and myself were there to see them leave .
The units concerned were the124TFS/132TFG coded 'IA' , 174TFS/185TFG coded 'HA' both Iowa ANG and 175TFS/114TFG coded 'SD' , South Dakota ANG .
All photographed on Kodachrome 64 slide film .

[MarkL]

Stunning aircraft, my fave of its generation and immaculately taken and processed photographs as always.

[Georgeconna32]

What I would give to see a sight like that again!!

[trend71uk]

Fantastic post Fred ,superb scans of a lovely aircraft. Wish I had seen this deployment, just checked to find 36 A-7's were deployed to Waddington for Coronet Buffalo . What a sight that must have been !
Thanks for posting.
Cheers,
Mark

[bigcrow]

Superb set, I was there when they arrived on a Saturday was it 32? An amazing sight. Happy Days..

Mark has just answered my question... O for a time machine...

[trend71uk]

Deployment details were :

114 TFG/175 TFS (South Dakota ANG)
A-7D 70-0960 70-0962 70-0964 70-0996 70-1030 71-0338 71-0349 72-0176 72-0195 75-0388 75-0389 A-7K 80-0292
SD (red/white)

132 TFW/124 TFS (Iowa ANG)
A-7D 69-6203 71-0295 71-0309 71-0318 72-0213 72-0253 75-0397 75-0399 75-0401 75-0402 75-0403 A-7K 81-0077
IA (red/yellow)

185 TFG/174 TFS (Iowa ANG)
A-7D 69-6215 69-6230 70-0932 71-0327 71-0358 72-0182 72-0190 72-0193 74-1750 75-0405 75-0407 A-7K 81-0073
HA (yellow)

info courtesy of sharpshooter

Cheers, Mark

[graham luxton]

A superb record Fred - it was the largest of all Coronet deployments to the UK.
Shot about an hours worth of cine footage of them on a couple of visits - A-7 heaven!

cheers,
Graham

[Cimmerian]

Great set of pictures. Thanks for sharing.

[CG3]

Arrivals day was the same day as the Bradford stadium fire IIRC.

[Arthur Tee]

Superb shots!

Remember that deployment well - unfortunately I must have been suffering from 'press-on itis' as somehow I only logged 26 of the 36 aircraft present...

My log for Thursday 16th May shows I 'made' the following:

Newton - nothing made

Syerston - 1 x Viking and 1 x Venture

Swinderby was very quiet (on a TACEVAL I think).

Scampton - 3 x Hawk, 10 x Jet Provost and 3 x Hunter with TMTS - Vulcan XH563 was still on display on the airfield - and Lancaster NX611 still guarded the gate!

Waddington - 26 A-7's and a NATO E-3A

Digby - to get the Meteor on the gate.

Cranwell - 25 x Jet Provosts noted (made 8).

Cottesmore - 17 Tornados noted (made 9).

Wittering - 3 Harriers made plus a BDRT Hunter.

Sibson - to get Varsity WF372

Alconbury - 7 x F-5E noted (made 2), 3 x TR-1A's (made 1), 6 x RF-4C's (made 1) plus 11 x Canberra and 2 x Nimrod R1 (Wyton's runway was being resurfaced at the time) - visiting were 2 Woodbridge A-10's (made 1).

Mildenhall - 11 x KC-135, 7 x C-130 (including Italian MM61988), 3 x C-5 and 3 x C-141.

Lakenheath - 8 x F-111F noted (made 2) plus 2 x A-10 seen (no serials noted).

Cambridge - one Tristar 500 in Pan Am colours (later to become part of 216 Squadron).

So a round trip in excess of 400 miles - and about 74 new serials in the log book!

Happy days...

Arthur

[Fred Martin]

Thanks for your comments guys , and as for Arthur Tees log for 16th May 1985 , that was not too unusual for the time considering the milage . You could even photograph most of what you saw as well over those meter high fences . Those certainly were great days . Cheers , Fred .

[FERG]

Brilliant Fred!!

Ferg

[Westy]

Yet another awesome post Fred

[tankbuster81]

In a word wow!!! ,and they look so meaty and menacing head on taxiing with cockpits open.How i wish i had gone! A lovely set,thank you for posting it.

[st24]

Fantastic SLUFs were just so, well, damn wonderful -one of my faves for sure. Pre internet I only found out about the deployment when 72-0176 of the SD guard turned up at Mildenhall air fete on the Saturday morning and on asking the pilot where he came from he said "Waddington- there's 36 of us up there!" Suffice to say my mate and me hot footed it up to Lincolnshire on the Tuesday! Great days!

[King Cobra]

Lovely shots but I can't for the life of me recall how I missed that deployment. I used to get out regularly for a day's photting and spotting so something must have gone wrong to have kept me at home during their stay at Waddo. Gutted.

[DanBeeden]

Wonderful shots - I love the last pic with all the others in the background but each one is terrific. Sadly a bit before my time (at least to have been stood at the fence camera in hand); the only ones I can remember seeing were the immaculate Penn ANG pair at IAT 91.

Lovely aircraft; funny how it is everything but streamlined/fighter-like yet still looks the business.

Thanks for sharing these.