Abandoned WWII aerodromes can be eerie places. In my aerial youth Britain was littered with them, particularly in East Anglia. Some are now housing estates, some factory estates, and some have gone back to farmland. And a few soldier on as aerodromes but in a manner most curiously stunted. These are wondrously obvious from the air. You can see the outlines of – or indeed the crumbling remains of – huge wide runways; but the bit you’re going to land on is a much smaller, clearly delineated strip in the middle of the old main runway, but perhaps a third of the length of the original and half the width.

The reason for this is mundane economics. In wartime this aerodrome launched streams of fully fuelled and bombed-up Lancasters, B17 Fortresses, and ground-hugging Liberators. The flying club or other aviation business which has now got a (frequently tenuous) grip on the site do not possess any Lancasters, bombed-up or otherwise, these being a trifle unwieldy for ab initio training or air taxi work, and not only has no need for all of the huge old runway but could never even begin to afford its upkeep, maintenance, and licensing. So they just use and upkeep a segment of it.

These are the aerodromes I find eerie. I’ve flown in and out of them thousands of times. In my early flying days many still had WWII Control Towers sliding into dereliction, usually not very genteelly, and very often huge old bomber maintenance hangars still stood. Now, except on certain historic sites, those structures are almost entirely gone. But to me the aerodromes are still eerie. I cannot stroll along a taxiway in the dusk without imagining the combined thunder of 100 ghostly Merlin engines as the Lancs taxi past…

This particular former aerodrome is not like that today.

In WWII they called it a training base for bomber crews, flying Wellingtons. I do not entirely believe its role stopped at training. In fact I know it didn’t. But nowadays most of it is an industrial park. The runways still sort of physically exist, but no aeroplane has put its wheels down here for probably half a century – and if anyone tried it today they’d most certainly bump into very solid objects such as factories and cranes.

There is no historical pull to this old aerodrome. Nothing eerie about this place…

Until you find – which isn’t easy – the Magazine Area. Then you step into a time warp.

The name itself is suspicious. RAF aerodromes do not normally have ‘Magazine Areas’. Well… they do of course, but they don’t call them that. They call them Bomb Dumps, Bomb Stores, Munitions Stores, Weapon Stores, High Explosive Stores – but not Magazine Areas. Magazine Area is Army or Navy-speak – not RAF. In fact various old keys to various old things in this place still have tags which read ‘Bomb Dump’ – and yet somehow, at some time, for some reason, it became the Magazine Area.

Okay, maybe a small thing. But I wonder about it…

Apart from the current name, this is a fairly standard bomb-dump. Looking, on the face of it, pretty unchanged since 1945. Which in itself is eerie. As is the fact that woodland has matured on two sides of it in the last 65 years, so it is actually a not unlovely place to be.

But a bomb dump is a bomb dump, and instantly recognisable. The explosives bunkers are half underground, windowless, with armoured roofs festooned inside with hoists. They have only one entrance with very heavy steel sliding doors, and are bolstered by grassed earthen mounds like the glacis of forts dating back to muzzle-loading cannon and muskets. They are well separated, and no one entrance points at the entrance of another, the idea being that if one emplacement has a misfortune – such as blowing up – the explosion will mainly go out of the entrance doors (open or closed making little difference) – and not set off a chain reaction in the other redoubts.

So far, so familiar. Every RAF base has a bomb dump – or whatever they care to call it – and every bomb dump is discretely tucked away as far from the main body of the aerodrome as is practical, since if something does go bang you’d rather it didn’t take out the whole airbase. The staff are called ‘Dumpies’ – with no disrespect, because arming modern weapons (nowadays called making them ‘live rounds’) is no casual job. In WWII it was even less of a casual job, since certain types of delayed fuzes (correct spelling, since in the RAF ‘fuses’ were electrical connections and ‘fuzes’ were bomb triggers, to avoid confusion – only the military could have thought that up) could detonate if you got them cross-threaded and unscrewed them even half a turn to have another go. This slightly discouraged folk from making a career as a Dumpy, and caused the Air Force to create a policy of taking the ordnance out of the stores to a Fuzing Point before arming them.

I don’t quite know how to put this genteelly, but I have snuck off from the thronging group to go behind a large tree to answer a call of nature. I there find a long, narrow foundation which most likely would have been – a fuzing point. A very long shed where bombs from the bunkers, now on trolleys, would be fuzed and then towed, fairly gingerly, out to the aircraft.

Training base, huh…?

Now it is just a crumbling concrete floor. This is a mysterious place as well as eerie.

 

That would have stopped them…

After closing (at least officially) as an aerodrome in 1946 it became home to the Rocket Propulsion Establishment and later the PERME – the Propellants, Explosives and Rocket Motor Establishment. This was all ever so hush-hush, the joint was guarded like Fort Knox, and for many years did not even show up on Ordnance Survey maps. (Presumably with the idea of thwarting dastardly Russian spies – “Dear Comrade Krushchev, you tasked me to investigate RAF XXXX, but I cannot seem to find it and it is not listed in the decadent capitalist phone books…”)

That would have stopped them, of course.

The rocket and other tests were carried out in test-bunkers in the middle of the aerodrome. This apparent volte-face of policy in fact made complete sense. The aerodrome no longer being an aerodrome, it now became wise to position potentially exciting tests as far from anything as possible – and especially a bomb dump. For obvious reasons you do not deliberately let off a large firework in a bomb dump. Or a magazine…

But that word ‘Magazine’ still niggles at me. It is not an RAF term. I look out over the Magazine Area and wonder what other secret weapons may have been cultivated and stored in these bunkers in subsequent years. I could take some intelligent guesses. But I have no way of finding out.

Shivery, this place.

But not shivery to Daniel Jubb, BLOODHOUND’s rocket-maker. He has recently – after years of negotiation – acquired a lease on this now-empty Magazine Area, and is turning it into a local satellite of his production base in California, USA, where his company The Falcon Project make… er, well, I’m not entirely sure what they make, being as how Daniel would have to kill me if he told me, but I’m dang certain it is not soup urns, troops-for-the-use-of. One bunker here, for example, will be used for mixing… er, mixtures, and another as a rocket test-firing cell. And a third as the Remote Command and Control Centre, because human beings are regarded as being a bit on the fragile side to be in close proximity to an experimental rocket firing or a witch’s brew of chemicals which could conceivably detonate with a very loud bang indeed.

The site was originally planned for commissioning next year, but Daniel has brought forward two elements of it – the rocket test cell and the control centre – specifically to accommodate one particular test on one particular day.

This day, in fact. It has been rather put off, but this day.

So the place is now a licensed explosives factory. And there is to be a firing of the 6 in (150 mm) diameter research version of BLOODHOUND’s 18 in Falcon rocket.

At twelve noon. It says here…

In the last chapter (See Life in a Test Cell), I visited the Cosworth test cell where the F1 engine and the BLOODHOUND HTP pump and tank are being tested. I mentioned then that test cells are a bit like film units – much given to hanging about.

Prophetic of me, that turned out to be.

Because here, on this day, we not only have a so-far untried test cell – but ALSO a film unit. I should have known better than to get up early so as to be here at the start of proceedings...

The film unit is the crew of the BBC One’s Bang Goes The Theory programme – an important, sensible, and high-rated series of scientific features, despite the title. And, in truth, the cameramen and technicians are here indeed presented with a most daunting task…

They are here to film a rocket firing which should work, but may not. Or may, if this turns out to be a really bad-hair day, blow up. All trial rocket firings carry these risks – there is nothing different about this one.

 

Suicide cameras

Assuming it works, the burn will last for between five and ten seconds. No longer. And with no chance whatsoever of shouting; “Cut! Let’s do it again!”

Oh, and the cameramen cannot be anywhere near it when it happens.

Not the easiest filming task of all time. And the answer seems to be what I immediately think of as suicide cameras.

The rocket is mounted inside the test bunker on a newly-created and most substantial test rig, which is bolted to the most substantial floor with a large number of most substantial bolts. You could hit that rig with a moderate-sized ocean liner and just take off a few chips of paint and sink the liner. The rocket exhaust is aimed out through the doorway, and on each side of the exit are blast walls, also most substantial, and presumably originally intended to further channel the results of any accidental bang in a direction more or less harmless. Or, at least, known.

And about 15 metres in front of the bunker entrance, Daniel Jubb has caused to be erected an even more substantial wall of huge concrete blocks, weighing some 50 tonnes and backed up by another 50 tonnes of earthen glacis like those around the bunker. This is a new blast wall, so placed as to prevent the dragon’s breath of a rocket firing turning the nearest woodland into a charcoal pit.

And on top of this glacis, very close to the line of fire, the BBC are erecting a camera position pointing into the test cell, their efforts not being overly assisted by the newly-earth-moved 45 degree slope, which creates a certain amount of quite entertaining slippage – not so much of earth, but of camera crews. This is, I gather, a very, very expensive camera, which at least proves the BBC are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. I can just visualise the insurance claim; “We emplaced the camera about 15 degrees off the projected centre of the rocket plume and then remotely activated it…”

If the insurance company can’t find a get-out clause in that, they are definitely losing their touch.

Other cameras – much smaller and not quite so expensive – are positioned even more suicidally. One is on the left-side blast wall. No-one is taking bets on its survival, but it might yield a second or two’s footage before it turns into something a burger chain would be proud to serve up. Two others are inside the bunker itself. They should survive unless the rocket actually explodes, but since all main circuit lights in the bunker will be shut off before the firing, they have their own floodlights, which take an endless time to sort out – as well they might, since the cell will be one second extremely gloomy, and the next lighted by one of the brightest flares in the world. A rocket ignition.

There is also, incredibly, one tiny camera in a tiny protective unit mounted on the new blast-wall and pointing directly at the rocket’s exhaust nozzle. This is not a BBC camera, but one attached there by Falcon Project.

“This may be sacrificial”, says Dan Jubb cheerfully. “But it may give me a look right up the colour of the rocket plume before it dies”.

Oh. Of course…

Well, actually, yes of course. Out in the Mojave desert the test rig is in the baking open air with 50 miles of nothing all around. You are obviously to not cluster around a test-firing, but retire to various trenches and a control room and record it all on video. In this much more compressed site Daniel is doing exactly the same thing.

This young man Jubb never ceases to amaze me. All around are bustling TV crew in the motley array of frequently scruffy clothing as modelled by TV crews the world over. The nearest thing to ‘smart’ is Ian Glover and Nick Chapman, in BLOODHOUND team gear.

Except for Daniel Jubb – who is probably the busiest man on the site. Daniel has elected to turn up wearing an immaculately tailored grey three-piece business suit – waistcoat and all, plus business shirt with cufflinks and a silk tie. He could have just walked out of a smart tailors in Saville Row. This test cell is clean by the standards of test cells, but all test cells are workshops and are never going to be polished Victorian drawing-rooms. Yet as the day wears on Daniel remains immaculate – no oil or dust smudges, not even a spot on the shirt-cuffs. I have no idea how he does this. Either he has a sort of natural gloss that dirt simply doesn’t stick to, or he is actually a Hogwarts professor in his spare time and has incanted a spell such as “Grubus Erasium”.

But Lordy, how the day does wear on…

The projected twelve o’clock firing time comes and goes. The TV crew are still setting up. From previous experiences of film crews I would now expect them to all go on strike until an FUC (Film Unit Catering) truck turns up. But no. they simply dispatch one of the gophers to the local mini-mart and there buy up probably their entire stock of sandwiches. I eye the pile rather wistfully, but feel that I didn’t ought to nick one. If this is evidence of probity in my old age I can only say it has come as bit late.

In truth I am rather warming to this particular film crew. They are unfailing polite, and unfailingly take a few moments out of their business to explain to me what they are doing. The Director, a lady called Esther Ingram, who after watching her at work I’d regarded as being a most formidable female, turns out to be absolutely charming. Still formidable, but charming.

The Presenter, one Jem Stansfield, I have not yet met. I would suspect him of being a clothes-peg (which is what ugly people always say about good-looking people) except that he is dressed most casually in a check-shirt and jeans. He is scheduled to participate with Daniel in the rocket preparation and firing – to be an active part of the action.

Hmmm.

I will shortly learn a bit more about Jem.

Eventually, almost incredibly, the filming preparations are done. Daniel and presenter Jem climb into inert green rubber suits, pull on inert green boots, don headgear which looks like a cross between a bee-keeper’s hat and a Soyuz One space helmet, long rubber gloves, and enter the bunker. Then come back out and do it all again for a camera-repeat. Or six. When they finally go back in I tag along.

I tag along…?

One does not ‘tag along’ in jeans and T-shirt into a test cell where HTP is being handled. But right now HTP is not in fact being handled. This is preparation for a short DI (de-ionised) water blast to check the systems. (And, I suspect, also so Daniel can eye up Presenter Jem in action and make sure he’s taken on board his extensive HTP briefing).

Presenter Jem in fact turns out not to be a clothes-peg – difficult anyway when you’re dressed like a sort of vertical green caterpillar – but a very good practical hand, manning the spanners while he and Daniel sort out a glitch in the nitrogen pressure system which will pressurise the HTP (currently DI water) tank.

The DI check goes fine.

Daniel and Jem go back into the bunker in their green rubber suits.

Now for the real rocket and the HTP.

HTP is not nice. The tank on the test rig is a vertical cylinder about six feet tall (roughly two metres) by probably one foot (30 cm) in diameter – in all perhaps 20 times the volume of the rocket. It is fuelled not by pumping in the HTP but by creating something approaching a vacuum at the top and sucking it in from below.

Once filled, just before firing it gets pressurised from three nitrogen cylinders to 800 psi (roughly 75% of full operating pressure). This combination pushes the HTP through the catalyst pack and into the rocket in less time than it takes to count to ten. We, the fragile homo sapiens, will not be present when this takes place.

In fact, we now all retire again to the Command and Control bunker. Daniel has removed the caterpillar outfit but is still in the immaculate suit which now looks slightly incongruous above the green Wellies. He briefs again – for those who have not already heard it, which can’t be anyone – the purpose of the trial. This is far from a set-up just for Bang Goes the Theory, however worthy they may be. This is a most genuine test with a most genuine purpose. This rocket has already been half fired – meaning fired for about ten seconds and then had the HTP shut off, leaving the fuel-grain within it about half-used. The question is, will that half-grain now re-light into a pure and even rocket-burn, or will it be in a sulk or wandered off to the pub? Daniel doesn’t quite put it like that, but that’s what it is…

“Three, two, one…”

 

Dan The Inscrutable

In the bunker one of Daniel’s technicians, a rather taciturn young man called Dave who probably has an IQ of about a zillion, presses a key on his board. Daniel’s own hand is hovering over a big red button which I think of as the Calamity Button. If he drops his hand all systems will instantly cut off and the firing will abort. Assuming, of course, that he is quick enough…

On the screens in front of him, the rocket lights up in – oh, maybe a second. And runs with a perfect burn for more than ten seconds. On one of the BLOODHOUND screens we are watching through the Falcon suicide camera right into the rocket plume. A huge red blast leaps at it but the camera seems to survive…

The people around me in the C and C bunker most clearly hear the roar of the rocket through 150 metres of distance, two extremely robust concrete walls, and a combined thickness of at least 70 feet of earthen glacis on the two bunkers. I, sadly, do not hear a thing, but the Good Lord – or more likely 40 years sitting behind unsilenced engines at full power – has elected to remove 75% of my hearing, so there are many things in this world which now pass me by. And you cannot lip-read a rocket…

Maybe one or two suicide cameras are destroyed – but the bulk, including the BBC’s so-expensive blast-wall camera and also the Falcon camera, survive.

The test is a success. In fact a resounding success.

Daniel The Inscrutable allows himself a small smile of triumph, largely hidden under the B36 moustache. Esther the Director makes a short speech of thanks which is applauded, and we all troop up to the firing bunker following the suit and green boots of Jubb.

In the bunker smoke still hangs in the air. I sniff it in but cannot detect any particular odour – maybe because my sense of smell has clocked-off in sympathy with my hearing, or maybe simply because the rocket has not burned any nasty chemicals.

The nozzle of the rocket is intact. The front end of the rocket is cool while the back end would fry an egg in one second – or more likely explode it. This is how it should be.

A successful test.

Will it actually be of any use?

On one level, certainly. All firings add data to the research bank. And additionally this firing tested a new rocket nozzle with the smallest throat yet attempted, plus a new ablative material for said nozzle. (I could of course explain ‘ablative’ to you, but you wouldn’t understand – this for the good and adequate reason that my own grasp of it is such that I would be talking bullsh**. Suffice to say it is something every well-dressed rocket nozzle needs to stop it over-heating).

Proving you can re-fire a half-burned fuel grain?

Difficult to say. Certainly on a record BLOODHOUND run there will be no question of firing up the rocket, stopping it, and then firing it again. But in work-up trials…?

Maybe. Just maybe. Daniel and his team must analyse the results, which is no five-minute job.

The Bang Goes the Theory team eventually depart, in good heart. I look around again at this eerie Magazine Area. And think again of today’s test and the ongoing Cosworth tests.

Yes, there are gaps between them.

The Cosworth programme is aimed at producing the right pressure and delivery rate from the pump to the 18 inch rocket – on time, every time, and reliably.

This 6 in firing has been helpful – as of course pressure-fed 18 in firings have been out in the scorching Mojave. But none are the same as an 18 inch firing which will test the entire system – Cosworth plus Falcon – all at the same time. Not the same at all.

And a tad more difficult.

For a start the entire combined test rig will be about 10 metres long – not easily accommodated in any UK test cell. And the noise will be other-world-ish, far, far beyond the Health and Safety limits for even this remote Magazine Area. Daniel figures a low-power firing might be possible here, but has no wish to deafen half of, say, Norwich with it.

Nonetheless, and after various delays, the two elements of the rocket programme – the pump equipage and the rocket itself – are now progressing in parallel and rapidly converging. The start of the big test programme is not far away.

I resolve to be there for the first big firing. Bunkers or not, even I should be able to hear that.

 

See also 6 inch rocket success and Cisco BHTV Episode 4 Behind the Scenes with the BBC