THE KEY role that Pershore Airfield played during the Second World War will be the subject of a one-day exhibition to mark next week’s VE Day 80th anniversary.
The event, which is on Saturday, May 10, from 10am to 4pm at Throckmorton Parish Hall, will feature many historical photographs and accounts of events in the airfield’s history from 1934 to its closure in 1978.
The day’s programme will include informative talks and musical performances by all-woman trio, The Spitfires, who specialise in singing wartime songs.
Trio, The Spitfires will be singing songs from the 1940s.
Charles Rigg, whose book ‘Bishampton and its locality’, will describe how the quiet backwater of Throckmorton was impacted by both the Second World War and the Cold War.
Pershore Airfield was taken over by the RAF after the outbreak of the war and had a key role from 1940 to 1943 as Operational Training Unit 23. It trained officers from the Royal Canadian Air Force, many of whom perished while taking part in the thousands of bomber raids over Germany in 1942.
A total of 52 aircrew serving at the airfield lost their lives from 1942 to 1944 and are buried in the Commonwealth Graves at Pershore Cemetery. Several of the Canadians who lost their lives are remembered too in the names of roads in a nearby housing development.
As VE Day approached, the airfield took on a new role as No 1 Ferry Unit, recovering aircraft and sending them to new destinations, mostly overseas.
The airfield had a lasting impact on Pershore after the war too, as the flying base for the Royal Radar Establishment at Malvern. Many were RRE houses built in Pershore during the 1950s during the Korean War and the Cold War with Russia.
The main runway was extended at this time to take jet aircraft capable of carrying nuclear bombs – fortunately never deployed in anger.
The airfield finally closed in 1978 but its history remains central to the character of Pershore and Throckmorton.
The event organisers – the Throckmorton Village Charity – hope to have a speaker at the exhibition to outline the history of the Pershore War Graves.
Refreshments will be available during the day.
