BAE Systems Warton

United Kingdom / England / Freckleton-Warton /
 military airbase, company, aircraft manufacturer
With the merger of English Electric Aviation with other aircraft divisions of the major manufacturers it became a British Aircraft Corporation site and then privatised as British Aerospace until its final transformation into BAE Systems. As such the airfield has been the testing ground for several front line aircraft including the Canberra, the Lightning,the Sepecat Jaguar, the Panavia Tornado and BAE Hawk (formerly the Hawker Siddeley Hawk) and most latterly the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Warton was used as the base for all British development aircraft (DA) and Instrumented Production Aircraft (IPA) in the Eurofighter programme. Warton has been home to the initial Typhoon squadrons of the Royal Air Force, No. 17 Squadron and No. 29 Squadron. This was under the so called "Case White" programme where BAE assumes more responsibility for training and support of the new aircraft than previous RAF types which were introduced under a more "in house" system. BAE insist that this allows inevitable problems with any new aircraft to be quickly ironed out by BAE personnel on site. BAE plans to offer this on site service to any export customers.

The final new build Tornado left Warton in 1998, a GR.1 for Saudi Arabia. Following this the main assembly hall was re-fitted as the final assembly site of the Eurofighter Typhoon. BAE estimate that modern manufacturing techniques will allow the 30 week assembly time for a Tornado to be reduced to 16 weeks for the Typhoon.


BAE Systems (Warton Aerodrome)
Lytham Road, Preston, Lancashire PR4 1AX
Phone : 01772 633333
Fax: 01772 858757
www.baesystems.com/WorldwideLocations/UnitedKingdomOld/...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warton_Aerodrome
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAE_Systems_Military_Air_&_Information
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   53°44'36"N   2°52'59"W

Comments

  • Warton , The birthplace {production and testing}of the lightning ,tornado,euro-fighter. The British English area 51,skunkworks,top-gun miramar.super long runway.lots of accidents of pilots getting caught in rogue Irish sea waves at low level. A defacto foreign pilot training base. I just loved driving by in my youth to school from Ashton Preston Lancs to Arnold School Lytham rd Blackpool.
This article was last modified 6 years ago