RAF Thornaby's remarkable link to Monty Python

The Spitfire on the roundabout in Thornaby

But yesterday all that changed. RAF Thornaby, and the thousands of airmen who served there, were remembered when a plaque was unveiled outside Boyes in the Pavilion shopping centre which is on top of a runway.

Wing Commander Matt Gildersleeve and Denis Grubb, chairman of the Stockton and Thornaby branch of RAFA, unveil the RAF Thornaby plaque. Picture courtesy of David Thompson

“It is a huge part of Thornaby’s heritage and it doesn’t have as high a profile as it should and hopefully this will raise the profile,” said Cllr Glenn Eastick, mayor of Thornaby.

The plaque was unveiled by Wing Commander Matt Gildersleeve of RAF Leeming, who was born in Darlington and attended Carmel School and the Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College.

He said: “It is a fitting tribute to a historically important airfield, and it is good for the RAF to re-establish links with the area – it was really interesting to see how many people stopped to look and take an interest.”

The project was started before the pandemic by the Stockton and Thornaby branch of the Royal Air Force Association. Chairman Denis Grubb said: “It is to honour the airmen – if it wasn’t for them, we would be speaking a very different language today.”

Denis’ father was in the RAF for six years as a bomb armourer, and Denis himself did five in the 1950s. “I was only the 25th official RAF hairdresser,” he said. “I am one of the even fewer than ‘the Few’!”

RAF Thornaby is overlooked even though it was an airbase from as early as the First World War, and when the Second World War broke out, it was one of only 10 airfields in the whole country that had paved runways.

Squadron 608 at RAF Thornaby

It was the home of Coastal Command which didn’t capture the headlines in the way that the Lancasters of Bomber Command down the road at MSG did. Coastal Command protected shipping in the North Sea bringing in vital supplies.

From 1930, Thornaby was the home of 608 Squadron North Riding of the Auxiliary Air Force – these volunteers were dismissed as “Saturday afternoon fliers” just as the Home Guard was derisively called Dad’s Army, but they became full-time members of the RAF and were tasked with policing the North Sea.

When The Northern Echo visited RAF Thornaby in September 1941, the squadron had already flown 11,000 hours and covered 1.65m miles – the equivalent of seven times from earth to moon.

And it had developed ‘the Thornaby bag’, as it became known across the RAF. This was a receptacle containing first aid supplies, food, drink and, importantly, cigarettes, that was dropped by 608 to stricken airmen and sailors who were in the sea waiting for rescue.

Seventy per cent of 608’s aircrew and ground staff were local people, but there were other squadrons based here, most notably Squadron 202, which was involved in the other great story from the airbase: the spotting of the German prisoner ship, Altmark, which resulted in the release of 299 British sailors who had been captured.

Memories told that story last week, and the three Hudsons which spotted the Altmark feature on the new plaque.

The 299 British sailors rescued from the Altmark, thanks to RAF Thornaby, return home

One of the three planes was piloted by John Fleetwood, whose son, Michael, would go on to form Fleetwood Mac.

At yesterday’s ceremony, a sadder father-and-famous son story emerged, because on Christmas Eve 1945, Sgt Ernest Idle, 36, was hitch-hiking home from RAF Thornaby to see his wife, Norah, and two-and-a-half-year-old son when he was killed in a traffic accident.

He is buried in a war grave in Thornaby cemetery.

Monty Python, with Eric Idle on the left

His young son grew up to be Eric Idle who was a member of the Monty Python comedy group. Eric, born in South Shields as his mother had been evacuated there from the north-west, is best known for writing and singing Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.

Stories like that show why RAF Thornaby should not be forgotten.

The party that unveiled the RAF Thornaby plaque in the Pavilion shopping centre. Picture courtesy of David Thompson