A Trip Back in Time. RAF Honington 1944-45

[Dan Johnson]

Some amazing film taken by a Boeing Rep stationed at RAF Honington in 44-45 when it was an active base as well as a repair and supply depot. If you stick through the 30 minutes of film you'll see some amazing 17 footage as well as a lot of other birds. "5 Grand" shows up and there is a wonderful one wheel landing by another 17. If you hold out until the end you'll also see an Aphrodite modified 17 taxi out and take off.

http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/805

[Chuck Giese]

Wow, what a trip. Great footage, although I did get a little weepy-eyed looking at the scrap piles

[TomC]

This is a little crazy, I was just coming here to post this exact video link.

I was searching for a site where we have been awarded some work in East Anglia, its next to RAF Honington, so using the history tool google earth I could see an aerial image showing the site in 1945 (not sure how accurate that date is) but you can see a good few planes around the airfield. Did a google search on it and came across this video! If you use the tool at the bottom there's a few other videos of interest on there too.

[Dan Johnson]

My understanding is a lot of that scrap got bulldozed into holes and buried at Honington. Sure makes you wonder how much of the stuff in those images ended up underground.

[05564]

WOW! What a great video. I'm so glad someone took the time to film this and thank you for sharing it with all of us. The caption says that near the end, that there is a Superfortress taking off, I'm not sure what that is, but it don't look like a B-29 to me. Can anyone identify what it is?

[Dan Johnson]

At the very end it's film of an Aphrodite modified B17 with the open flight deck and all that torpex

[Second Air Force]

That Fort at the end of the film is actually one of the controller aircraft. If I recall they named it The Roadster. Somewhere I have a couple of other photos of it but I'd never seen the wing color scheme so well as in this video.

[05564]

That's great, does anyone have some more photos of it. I don't think I ever saw one like it before?

[JAB]

The book "Aphrodite Desperate Mission" has some great pictures and a good read as well.