Embedded Files
Across the Penrose Valley from St Eval is RNAS St Merryn (HMS Vulture) the former Royal Naval Air Station of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. The airfield is soon to become a centre for the film industry as well as already having a fine recording studio among its buildings. You'll be interested in seeing these old buildings in the fields still.
I had a fascinating morning with Paul and Leah at their Black House Cornwall yesterday. They have made RNAS St Merryn's old telephone exchange into their totally off-grid home now and are a focal point for information about it.
During the day I explored the rights of way across the airfield, wherein lies a tale or two, and the rather bleak and haunting remains of this once vital Naval airfield.
Paul had negative plates of these two HMS Vulture personnel which I have now made positives and I wonder if anyone recognises them? If so please let us know!
The Cornwall at War museum has further information and displays including one on the WRNS who operated HMS VULTURE II. I wonder too if these ladies were stationed at Treligga or St Merryn?
The following is copied from the excellent Davidstow Airfield and Cornwall at War Museum website:
The two WW2 Fleet Air Arm stations in Cornwall at St Merryn and Treligga are well represented in the collection. The museum has unique wartime pictures of Treligga, known as HMS VULTURE II, which are displayed as a slide show. HMS VULTURE II operated from 1939 to 1955. It was an air to ground bombing and gunnery range and equipped with emergency landing strips in case aircraft had engine failure or received richochet damage whilst firing on the range. The entire operation at Treligga was unusually, but not uniquely, run by WRNS.
The Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS; popularly and officially known as the Wrens) was the women's branch of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy.
Detailed maps at the museum show the airfield and the extent of the firing ranges together with some interesting correspondence from local councils on the perceived effect on local fishing and industry.
I was sorry that https://www.facebook.com/tony.pink.35 who is an airfields’ expert was not able to join us... perhaps next time.
The bunker was part of RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service) St Merryn during WW2 as a communications hub. It was hidden well, sitting low, earthed in at the sides and situated just off the airfield. The very nature of the building meant that it didn’t have any of the conventional power or water supply, so we’ve had a sharp learning curve into off-grid living.
History of St Merryn Airfield for which this building was once the telephone exchange
St Merryn Airfield has been consistently used for aviation for nearly 100 years. It was established prior to World War I as a private aerodrome, became a civil aerodrome in the 1920’s before being commandeered by the Admiralty in the mid-1930’s. It is historically important to the Royal Naval Fleet Air Arm as it was the first Fleet Air Arm aerodrome to be constructed.
Being close to the Western Approaches, the Airfield was constructed in 1939 as a model training facility. In Autumn 1940 and Spring 1941 the airfield received the attentions of the Luftwaffe who on several occasions bombed the station to disrupt training activities, by 1943 it was recognised as the leading Royal Navy aviation finishing school for aircraft carrier-borne pilots, engineers and ancillary personnel prior to aircraft carriers departing for the war in the South Pacific during the latter part of the Second World War. Many types of aircraft flew from the airfield these included, Seafires, Corsairs, Barracudas, Albacores, Proctors, Masters, Sea Gladiators, Defiants, Sea Huricanes, Martinets, Lysanders, Fulmars, Swordfish, and Hellcats.
After WW11, the Royal Navy continued developing the Airfield and it became the primary carrier-borne training facility for the Korean War. The Royal Navy ended flying at St Merryn in 1959 and the Airfield was decommissioned in the 1960’s. Mr WR “Bob” Partridge (deceased) acquired the larger part of the facility in 1967. Private flying resumed shortly after.
As one of the most complete World War II airfields in the United Kingdom still in operation, the Airfield is considered to be a well marked and well known historical ex-Royal Naval Air Station with a long history of private flying.
Bob Partridge established the Airfield as a major UK Gyrocopter training facility/club in the 1970s. He also provided facilities for the rebuild of several vintage and classic aircraft including the celebrated WW2 "Grace" Spitfire, one of the only 2-seater Spitfires in the world still flying.
Bob Partridge passed away in 2012
this information copied from
Dec 2022
Get lost on a walk in Cornwall!
Even in the mizzle it can be a good thing to do.
I won’t recount the full story of getting lost on a guided walk around St Merryn airfield last week but to my delight and frustration my navigator ran out of battery at St Ervan’s.
So happy that it did as this airfield church is down an unvisited dead end road and way off my intended route and it introduced me to framed lines from “Summoned by Bells” by John Betjeman. He’d cycled here from Trebetherick, presumably, one summer’s evening and met the vicar. It’s a fair ride but what impressed me more was that this epically long poem about his childhood memories was written when he was in his 70’s and captures so much about Cornwall it will ring bells with you!
Betjeman filmed the poem with Jonathan Stedman but it wasn’t well received by the critics of whom Betjeman had quite a few. No doubt the film is dated but try reading some of it instead and you’ll be pleased you did!
Extract:
From SUMMONED BY BELLS
DEAR lanes of Cornwall! With a one-inch map,
A bicycle and well-worn “Little Guide”,
Those were the years I used to ride for miles
To far-off churches. One of them that year
So worked on me that, if my life was changed,
I owe it to St. Ervan and his priest
In their small hollow deep in sycamores.
The time was tea-time, calm free-wheeling time,
When from slashed tree-tops in the combe below
I heard a bell-note floating to the sun;
It gave significance to lichened stone
And large red admirals with outspread wings
Basking on buddleia. So, casting down
In the cool shade of interlacing boughs,
I found St. Ervan’s partly ruined church.
Its bearded Rector, holding in one hand
A gong-stick, in the other hand a book,
Struck, while he read, a heavy-sounding bell,
Hung from an elm bough by the churchyard gate.
“Better come in. It’s time for Evensong.”
There wasn’t much to see, there wasn’t much
The “Little Guide” could say about the church.
Holy and small and heavily restored,
It held me for the length of Evensong,
Said rapidly among discoloured walls,
Impatient of my diffident response.
“Better come in and have a cup of tea.”
The Rectory was large, uncarpeted;
Books and oil-lamps and papers were about;
The study’s pale green walls were mapped with damp;
The pitch-pine doors and window-frames were cracked;
Loose noisy tiles along the passages
Led to a waste of barely furnished rooms:
Clearly the Rector lived here all alone.
He talked of poetry and Cornish saints;
He kept an apiary and a cow;
He asked me which church service I liked best —
I told him Evensong… “And I suppose
You think religion’s mostly singing hymns
And feeling warm and comfortable inside?”
And he was right: most certainly I did.
“Borrow this book and come to tea again.”
With Arthur Machen’s “Secret Glory” stuffed
Into my blazer pocket, up the hill
On to St. Merryn, down to Padstow Quay
In time for the last ferry back to Rock,
I bicycled — and found Trebetherick
A worldly contrast with my afternoon.
20
The top three churches all have an airfield attached!
North Cornwall has hosted many amazing American pilots over the years. No doubt the ones here this week may not know this story of one of their best. They'll certainly not have heard of the gunnery range on the cliff top at Treligga where the pilot did the impossible and landed (and the next day took off) a Flying Fortress in 1943.
If I was casting an actor to play Lt. Jack Omohundro I would want a young Tom Hanks. Someone anyhow to make the impossible possible.
If anyone gets around to making the film then the story in brief is that Lt. Jack Omohundro lands a B-17 called "Belle of the Bayous," at Treligga (HMS Vulture ll) just as their remaining three engines are running out of fuel in bad weather. They've seen the red flare that's told them it's impossible to successfully land a bomber there but they do so anyhow.
Making the landing more interesting, Treligga is only manned by women and the rough grass landing strips, each measuring 2,250 feet, are only intended for wheels-up landings by small aircraft with engine failure or ricochet damage sustained whilst towing targets on the range.
Anyhow, Omohundro saves his plane and crew and goes on to have a distinguished flying career with Pan Am. He died in 2010 a year after US Airways Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger became an overnight hero by crash-landing on the Hudson River. Certainly they both were made of "the right stuff" and if you want a guided walk around the fields at Treligga where this happy story really took off, then it's a beautiful place to spend the day. Do send me a message if you want me to show you around.
A sister aircraft to Belle of the Bayous did later achieve celebrity film status. The Memphis Belle was the first 8th Air Force bomber to be officially recognised as achieving 25 missions without loss of life. Just over a year after the Treligga landing the Memphis Belle flew its third mission over the submarine pens at St Nazaire and on the way back landed at Davidstow Moor, just a few miles away from Treligga. Davidstow was built and equipped for bombers so there would not have been much of a drama in the landing, even though the whole sqaudron had been diverted because of bad weather at RAF Bassingbourn near Cambridge where they should have landed. You can still walk (or actually drive) on Davidstow's windswept cracked concrete runways today. The 1944 film documentary (Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress by director William Wyler) was later fictionalised for the popular 1990 British-American movie of the same name.
Paul Parrott who has renovated the telephone exchange https://www.facebook.com/blackhousecornwall that controlled the airfields at Treligga and St Merryn can give you a pilot's insight into this story if you are interested.
See my other posts and photos on this story at https://www.facebook.com/.../a.148352867.../2393176167626817 and thanks to Wiki for the photo of another B-17. https://upload.wikimedia.org/.../B17_-_Chino_Airshow_2014...
Things didn't go so well for the real aircraft as two years after it's amazing flying feat it ended up as scrap metal back in the USA.
https://b17flyingfortress.de/.../42-29749-belle-of-the.../
Same too for the airfield but if you go up to the excellent museum at Davidstow they have some interesting bits and pieces from it and all the other airfields that operated in Cornwall with the Americans!
You can just make out the old Airfield control tower in the field here at Treligga which used to be a WW2 airfield for use in emergencies and for sending-up towed-targets for gunnery practice. On 16 September 1943 an American B-17 Flying Fortress was forced to make an emergency landing at HMS Vulture II. The pilot, Capt Jack Omohundro (1921-2010) had ignored a red flare warning him to keep clear as the landing strips were hardly used and not suited to a bomber.
However, the plane was chronically short of fuel and running on three engines after a raid on U-boat pens at Nantes in France. The bomber had left its formation to try to preserve what little fuel it had left. Spotting the tiny Treligga airstrip, Jack skillfully landed 'wheels-down' just 50 yards (46 m) short of the Wrens quarters. When the Americans stepped out of their aircraft they were amazed to find HMS Vulture II entirely in the hands of Wrens. After a meal and a night's sleep, the B-17 had to be stripped down to take-off out over the sea. A skeleton crew flew it the few miles down the coast to RAF St Eval where it was then fully fuelled and given a safety check.
Jack Harris Omohundro died on October 8, 2010 at 89 in Crowley, Louisiana. He was born September 28, 1921, in Atlanta, Georgia and was the only child of Orville Gleaves "Jack" and Sadie Omohundro. They moved to Crowley in 1922 where he graduated from Crowley High in 1938.
He attended SLI, now known as the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps in 1940. In 1942, he was assigned to the 351st Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force in Polebrook, England.
Captain Omohundro successfully piloted a B-17, affectionately named by him, "Belle of the Bayous," for 25 combat missions over Europe, mainly France and Germany.
After returning to the States, he was assigned as a training officer for returning combat pilots in Galveston, Texas. During this time, he was recruited by Pan American Airways, and in 1945, he was released from active duty with the following citations: the Distinguished Flying Cross, the American Defense Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the European-African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, and the World War II Medal.
He then began his career with Pan Am flying the Boeing 314 boat, also known as a Clipper Ship or Great Flying Boat. During his 34 years with Pan Am, Captain Omohundro flew almost every aircraft in the fleet, concluding with the Boeing 747.
For a young boy with visions of flying, Jack's dreams led him into World War II and then brought him into the world of commercial aviation history with Pan American Airways. He had the good luck and fortune, or as he always said, "the grace of God," to have a dream that eventually brought him all over the world.
He was a devoted husband and father, and his life was one of bravery, honor, and humility. He was an active member of the First United Methodist Church and active in the Rotary Club, the Retired Pan American Pilots Association, the 351st Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force, the 32nd Mason of Crowley Lodge 243, American Legion Post 15, VFW Post 6720 ROA, the Military Officers Association of America, Louisiana Honor Air, and the Texas Jack Association. https://www.legacy.com/obi.../theadvertiser/obituary.aspx...
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