Former RAF Morpeth

 airport, Second World War 1939-1945, historical layer / disappeared object

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Morpeth airfield was actually situated 3 miles SW of Morpeth and was an air gunners school. The site was home to No.80 (French) Operational Training Unit.

Monday, 16th November 1942. A Botha took off on the wrong runway at Morpeth airfield and collided with another similar aircraft. One man was killed and another injured.

The following article appeared in the September 2nd 1992 edition of the Northumberland Herald& Post:

'50 years on ... an airman remembers' - A longed-for visit to the grave of a wartime friend was paid last week when ex air-gunner Saul Muller returned to Morpeth. Saul, a British national who was born in Belgium, decided when he retired that he would visit the graves of his wartime comrades and try to trace any who may be still alive. In an emotional tribute Saul, now sixty-eight years old, laid flowers at St Mary's Church at the graves of friends and room-mates who died during a training flight over Morpeth on March 29th 1943.

Saul had escaped from Le Havre as the Germans occupied Europe when he was a teenager. In the spring of 1942 he heard from the Red Cross that his sister and mother had been arrested and taken to concentration camps. This led to him volunteering for the RAF and eventually he joined the Royal Netherlands Naval Air Service.

He was given a train ticket to Morpeth where he would be trained by the RAF to become an air-gunner. One week before passing out, an Air Vice Marshal visited the Morpeth aerodrome. It was a cloudy morning and the trainees would not normally go up in such conditions, but because of the visit, they did. On board each Botha aircraft was a pilot, an instructor and three trainee air-gunners. The plane which took off after Saul's crashed into another, which was coming in to land. Ten people died, five of them Dutch trainees and one English. Their average age was twenty. Two of the dead were Saul's room-mates.

" It was a moving experience for me to visit their graves " said Saul " the memories flooded back, when the funeral was held at St Mary's, the entire town seemed to be there. Everyone was moved by the circumstances of their death "

Today the site has reverted to agriculture, several of the buildings remain and are used for storage. Parts of the hardstanding remain and are used for a weekly car boot sale.