SACRILEGE!
The Home Office is considering plans to turn the airfield where the Dambusters took off into an asylum seekers’ detention centre. No wonder 40 leading historians are up in arms...
STAND on the edge of this bleak runway, with the light fading and the wind spiteful enough to cut through the thickest of coats, and I swear you can hear the thunderous ghosts of the Lancasters that once took off from here.
For it is from this very spot on a plateau north of Lincoln that, 80 years ago, a squadron of the mighty RAF bombers took off on one of the most daring missions of World War II — the celebrated Dambusters Raid.
Few need reminding what happened that night in May 1943. Nineteen Lancasters left their base at RAF Scampton with a mission to cripple the Nazi war effort by destroying three dams in the Ruhr valley.
Each plane was equipped with that most Heath Robinson of weapons — the bouncing bomb — which would be delivered under a hail of anti-aircraft fire to skip across the water and explode against the side of the dams.
The raid was deemed a success. Two of the targets were breached, the third was damaged. The Nazis had to use vast amounts of money and manpower to restore the dams, which supplied vital hydroelectric power and water for the factories on the Ruhr.
But, of course, for the men of the newly formed 617 Squadron, the raid came at a terrible cost. Out of the 19 Lancasters and 133 airmen who left Scampton that night, eight aircraft were never to return. Fifty-three men were killed.
The decorations were plentiful, not least for the leader of the mission, Guy Gibson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross. He was only 24, and died 16 months later when his de Havilland Mosquito crashed while returning from a mission.
This link with the Dambusters would surely be enough to ensure that Scampton — officially closed by the RAF last September — will always have a special place in British history.
BUT this spot is significant for other historical reasons, too: it has been the home of not only the Red Arrows, but also the Vulcan bombers that for many years stood ready to carry Britain’s nuclear deterrent. It is hard to think of somewhere more worthy of being preserved for future generations — to perhaps visit the officers’ mess where Gibson and his colleagues spent their days and nights — or see the grave of Gibson’s beloved Labrador which was run over and killed on the morning of the raid.
Until last week, it looked like Scampton would indeed be saved. Thanks to the far-sighted efforts of the local Conservative- led council, some £ 300 million of private finance had been secured to turn the site into a hub for business, innovation, hospitality — and heritage.
Scampton was to become a showcase for the Government’s much-vaunted levelling-up agenda in a relatively deprived part of the country, and a model for the preservation of our recent past.
But now, all this is at risk. For the Home Office is considering turning RAF Scampton into an immigrant detention centre housing an estimated 1,500 asylum seekers. If the decision goes ahead, it will be a historical tragedy, as well as an economic one — the revamp of the site would have provided thousands of jobs.
Opposition to the Home Office’s plan here has nothing to do with Nimbyism or any resistance to asylum seekers. When I visited last week I found nobody, from either side of the political divide, who supported the plan. And so opposed are some Conservative councillors to it that they are now questioning their loyalty to the Tory Party.
The fact is that the Dambusters is Scampton. The local pub is the Dambusters Inn, and its interior is festooned with curios celebrating the raid and 617 Squadron. Visit the gents — the door is marked ‘Pilots’, while the ladies is ‘WAAF’ (a nod to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force) — and you come face to face with a mural of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb.
Owner Greg Algar — who has a Labrador called Bomber — has, over the past 14 years, stuffed the hostelry with 600 or so pieces of wartime memorabilia, some of which are associated with his grandfather and father, who served in Bomber Command during the war and between them undertook 111 operations into Nazi-held Europe.
‘Scampton is the most important wartime airbase in the country,’ Greg tells me over a pint in a section of the pub called the Officers’ Mess. ‘I see it as my job for the heritage to be returned. But I don’t see how that can happen if the place is turned into an asylum centre.’
Darrell Harding, a history teacher at a secondary school in Lincoln who was in a past life an RAF crewman on a Chinook helicopter and served in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan, agrees.
‘Whenever we used to fly into Scampton, you would get a chill down your spine,’ Darrell says. ‘We all knew just how historically important a place it is, and you felt proud to be there.’
Behind him on the wall is a map marked Lincolnshire Airfields 1939-1945, which features 42 airfields. So why, out of all of them, choose Scampton?
Hamish Falconer, a former member of the Foreign Office, who has been selected by the Labour Party to fight the Conservative held seat of Lincoln at the next General Election, is baffled: ‘It flies in the face of the Government’s own levelling-up policy.’
Showing me round the airbase is Sarah Carter, a professional cake decorator who has lived in a house at the bottom of the airfield’s taxiway for eight years, and whose husband served in the RAF for more than two decades.
WIt would be a historical tragedy as well as an economic one
E ARE treated, by chance, to our own private display by the Red Arrows. Though no longer based at Scampton, they regularly use the air space above to practise.
‘Sometimes I have to bring my washing in because the coloured smoke from their trails ends up on my clothes,’ Sarah laughs.
She takes me to the real officers’ mess where Gibson and his fellow pilots ate their last meal before the raid. It stands forlorn and boarded up. In his book, Dam Busters, historian James Holland recounts a conversation that took place in the building between
gibson and one of his flight commanders, melvin ‘Dinghy’ Young. ‘Can i have your egg if you don’t come back?’ Young asked gibson, referring to the breakfast that would await them on their return. gibson’s reply is unprintable.
Holland — chair of the Chalke Valley history Festival, which is sponsored by the mail — is another who is appalled by the home office plan. ‘Scampton has an extraordinarily rich heritage,’ he tells me, ‘and while it’s best known for the dams raid, its history goes back to World War i, right through into the Cold War and beyond.
‘ it is, in many ways, the embodiment of Britain’s aviation past and should be part of its future. to turn it over as an asylum centre would be a terrible cultural and heritage desecration.’
Holland is among some 40 leading historians — including Sir Antony Beevor, Sir max hastings and Dan Snow — who have written an open letter to the home Secretary, urging her to reconsider.
‘We firmly believe that there are better suited locations for the compassionate and dignified processing of refugees,’ the letter states. As for the buildings at Scampton most likely earmarked for the asylum seekers, they are said to be unfit for purpose, having been abandoned for well over a decade, and in a poor state of repair.
ROGER Patterson has been a Conservative councillor for West Lindsey District Council up here for years. ‘the whole thing destroys what was going to be a huge attraction for visitors, and was going to be the biggest investment in Lincolnshire i can remember,’ he says. ‘And now we’re about to be left with nothing.
‘it makes me wonder whether this government really is Conservative after all.’
The tragic truth is that, if the plan goes ahead, nobody is likely ever again to gain entry to this moving site. in the graveyard of the church at Scampton are the headstones of 107 airmen who died on active service.
Another eight of the graves are of german airmen, killed in raids on Britain between 1941 and 1945. the fact the germans’ bodies were buried by the rAF with full military honours tells you so much.
And indeed, the 1,600 civilians and forced labourers who died in the floods after the dams were breached were not forgotten — not least by guy gibson himself.
‘the fact that people . . . might drown had not occurred to us,’ he said later, adding: ‘no one likes mass slaughter and we did not like being the authors of it.’
If the young men of Bomber Command showed so much respect to their enemy, surely the minimum we can do as a nation is to honour the memories of our own young heroes — by preserving the highly important site from where so many flew to their deaths.