Czech-mate at Honington

Do You Remember?

#2: Czech-mate at Honington by Dave Jackson

Just czech that, mate (titter)

During my time at RAF Honington I had a habit of having my camera to hand whenever I was on duty, especially when I did airfield patrol. One day while I was parked up at the 27 end of the runway at Honington I had the mains set in the wagon tuned to the air traffic frequency when I heard them say that they had 'Mig Aircraft inbound, five minutes". On hearing this I quickly tuned over to the TWCU line-comms to hear them talking about putting them in "Slots five to ten". With that information I made for the TWCU line. On the way round the peri-track my ops room came up on the hand set I had in the wagon telling me to present myself over at TWCU Ops to do customs on the incoming aircraft! So the aircraft duly arrived in the circuit, two Mig 29s, a Su22, two L39s, a Su25K and an An12, carrying all the spares kit. After customs declaration I made time to photograph the aircraft in between the TWCU students climbing all over them. It was 11 June 1992 and the aircraft were on route to the Air Tournament International at Boscombe Down. The other thing I remember about that day was that half the station must have turned out to see them judging by the amount of people that came up to the line!

The Su 22-M4 was from 32 ZTL at Namest nad Oslavou, the two Mig 29s and the two L39s coming from the Czech AF Institute at Prague/Kbely. The Su 25K was on the strength of the 30th Combat Regiment at Pardubice.