Shepherds Grove

[felixdk]

Hi,

The recent release of the Section F8 F-86 for Microsoft FS got me interested in flight simming again as the Sabre is my all time favorite a/c. I did a repaint of it in the colors of the 92nd FIS and decided that I needed a UK base to fly it out of. Bentwaters would have been OK, but Shepherds Grove would be perfect, so I started digging for info and trying out software to create an airfield. An accurate, usable field is the immediate goal, with generic buildings placed as correctly as possible. That will be followed by learning to create buildings, static a/c and scenery as close as possible to the real Shepherds Grove in the early 50s(it will be an ongoing project). Here's how it stands as of now







The photos on Richard Flagg's website have already been very helpful, but any info on RAF Shepherds Grove would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Stevo]

Hi Don

Looks great, is it FS9 or FSX?

I've sent a private massage to you

Stevo

[felixdk]

Hi Stevo,

That's in FSX. I'm going to reinstall FS9 as I want to make sure that it will work there also. I imagine some of the object libraries may be different? I'm in love with that Sabre, though. I hadn't touched FS for more than a year till I ran across that F-86.

[felixdk]

Hi,
I'm doing research on the layout of RAF Shepherds Grove and using Richard Flagg's photos, Flashearth and Google Earth, I've come up with some tentative IDs of some of the buildings but am left wondering about this complex at the northwest side of the field




It seems to have the same configuration as buildings that were identified as an "Institute" in a thread on another field. Would this be a "NAAFI" building and therefore probably the Base Exchange when the USAF was using the airbase?

[norwichpaul]

The nissen to the left is the station theatre ort cinema

[P Bellamy]

The Nissen complex would appear to be an Officers' Mess 12877/41 with two huts reduced in length.

All the best,
PB

[felixdk]

Thanks for the help, Paul & Paul. The Officers' Mess probably ended up as the "O Club" when we were the airfield's tenants.

[REF]

I have a site plan for the Airfield Site only dated 1944. All I have listed is that is Site No 3. I couldn't say exactly what it was though.

[P Bellamy]

Here's a quick trace-over from the 1940s-50s air photo, transferred onto the Google Earth image:



The Officers' Mess was built full size, the projection room was on the end of one bay of a Dining Hall (this remaining bay has now been demolished) and what appears to be a Sergeants' Mess at the southern end of a Communal Site. An Ablutions Block stood between the Dining Hall and Sgts' Mess.

Elsewhere on site, the Institute stood immediately north of the Gym and Chancel.
This had a slight deviation from the AM Drawing in that rather than having the storage hut seperate at one end of the parallel bays, it was built alongside due to lack of space, and became directly connected by a flat-roofed extension.

All the best,
PB

[jason]

Near the Gym i noticed what looked like the Ops block, is this so?