R.A.F. Leconfield
R.A.F. Leconfield
Fighter Weapons School
RAF Leconfield situated near Beverley in East Yorkshire, was used in the 1950s as a Fighter Weapons School to train pilots in the use of armament on various aircraft. They fired the cannons at aerial targets and ground targets, dropped 25lb practice bombs and fired air to ground rockets. All this activity took place either over the sea or onto the ground at the bombing range on the coast. As such it was a busy station for armourers and there were a large number of them.

I arrived there in the summer of 1955 along with another armourer from Kirkham. I came by train and he arrived on his motorcycle. We were given beds in the transit billet until we had b e e n allocated a bed space in the armourers’ building. The first two days were spent going round the various offices on the camp to report in and get a signature on our forms. This could be a lengthy procedure as we had to find the offices and then the person to report to and sometimes they weren’t there and we had to make a return visit. Eventually we could report back to the station armoury to hand in our completed forms.

We were then told where we would be employed and where we would stay. The building consisted of 4 rooms each containing 20 beds and another small room for the corporal in charge. There was a washroom with showers and another small room for ironing. It was all central heated and quite comfortable.

We ate all our meals in the mess and these consisted of breakfast at 8am, lunch around midday and a main meal from 5pm. Supper was also available at 9pm. The meals were substantial and usually quite good. My favourite was the chipolata sausages and I would get a large plate of these, a soup plate half filled with butter and half a loaf then proceed to make a big pile of sandwiches. We were usually quite hungry.
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