Zeals - 488 [NZ] Sq

[chinapilot]

Was tootling around last week over in the UK and often go past Zeals where Mosquito equipped 488 were based from May-July 1944.
You can see the concrete perimeter track but while the general layout of the field is still apparent it has returned to agriculture.
Not a great success as a field due to drainage problems that were never really overcome and it's position with some higher ground around it led to several crashes [not 488 though]. It had a specially designed approach lighting system to cope with the difficult approach at night.

It was used for crop spraying in the 60s and 70s and ironically a few itinerant Kiwis flew from there then.



The terrain around it to the SW...[RAF Mosquito crashed at night in the field ahead]



Alfred's Tower which is a great landmark [USAAF Norseman hit this in fog trying to find Zeals]

[delticman]

Um, I went there and talked to those blokes, G-BFOY was the Agwagon. I keep running into one of them at Jerilderie.

[Dave Homewood]

Very interesting indeed. What part of the UK is Zeals in?

[chinapilot]

It's right down at the bottom of Wiltshire and borders Dorset and Somerset...in Google Earth go about 15nm east of Glastonbury...perimeter track is very apparent.

[Dave Homewood]

OK, very interesting indeed. Thanks for posting. I'd love to visit some of the old airfields that the NZ squadrons were based at someday. I don't think many if any of them are still active nowadays sadly, but hopefully some of the local pubs the airmen frequented will be.

[baronbeeza]

I worked at Redhill 40 years after the war ended and yet we still had a blackboard with servicing details of the fighters etc. No-one had got around to rubbing it all out and updating. Not much happens in fast time in England.
Preserving history is easy as there is generally a reluctance to change anyway.
The pubs Dave spoke about will most certainly be there and for the most part unchanged.
One of the NZ squadrons had been at Redhill in the forties. We even had a hangar ghost but he won't have been a Kiwi, I would have been told if that was the case.

I guess the nearest hotel would have been in Nutfield Ridge but there were numerous country pubs about.

At Cranwell we had a map board in the mess with a cardex system as an index for all the nearby pubs. It would take years to visit them all but it was good fun taking a crack at it.

[chinapilot]

Problem is that around 20 pubs a week are closing permanently...on this trip two closed in villages near our place.

[baronbeeza]

Yes, I could believe that also. Sounds a little like Westport on the West Coast... in the '70's there was something like 13 pubs on the main street. More than a few of them are now no longer in existence.

I have used the A303 quite a bit and never realised Zeals was there. I stayed in Castle Cary a couple of times and the locals really looked after me. I was taken to Yeovilton museum and a few other local spots.
I worked down in Exeter a few years back and would have travelled up that stretch a couple of times then also.

www.atlantikwall.co.uk/atlantikwall/Witshire/zeals06/html/page06.htm

Of course Lincolnshire really was bomber country. While at Cranwell we could see on the Royal Ordnance inch to the mile maps all the sites of the various disused airfields about us. They were literally every 5 or 6 miles apart in places.