FOR some of these former air traffic controllers it was the first time they had returned to base in more than 40 years.

More than 50 RAF veterans who spent time in RAF Brize Norton control tower got together for a reunion last weekend.

As well as sharing old memories and laughing at photographs of days they had spent on the base in the 1960s and 1970s, the airmen and women were offered a tour of today’s control tower.

Former senior aircraftsman Colin Blakelock, 61, who now lives in Canada, had not visited the base since leaving in October 1971.

He said: “It seems a lot bigger.

“Going up the tower was interesting – it’s modern with computers everywhere.

“We used a plastic board which you would write on with chinagraph.”

He said while the equipment inside was very different, the layout of the rooms was the same.

Mr Blakelock added: “It was a real walk in the past.

“It seemed to me to be a lot busier than it was.

“You don’t see much flying overhead, whereas back then they seemed to be flying all the time.”

Another key difference was the level of security.

Mr Blakelock said: “You could just drive straight on. There was no security that I recall.

“Now you have to produce identification to get in and give your reasons but back then it was pretty much open to the public, anyone could have driven on to the base.”

He met his wife, then Senior Aircrafts -woman Anne Young, 60, at the airbase, and the couple married in Witney.

Mr Blakelock – who emigrated to Canada in 1977 where he worked as a police officer – arranged the reunion using various social websites.

James Lyall, who now lives in Northampton, was based at Brize from 1966 to 1968.

He said: “The station was very quiet when I arrived in 1966 and I distinctly remember how it had an almost ghostly air with many empty buildings and unused roads.

“We are so very grateful for the current air traffic staff to have taken time out from their busy schedule to meet us and to have listened to our comparisons from those halcyon days in the 1960s at Brize Norton when things were just a tad quieter.”

Another reunion is planned to be held in three years.

DOWN THE YEARS

At the beginning of the 1960s the base was being used by American airforce bombers, the last ones returning to the United States in 1965.

The RAF resumed control of the base in April that year, as a transport and then air support command airfield.

A build-up of personnel and facilities led to the site becoming the major transport base for the RAF.

That included building the Gateway House Hotel and the £2m base hangar, at that time the largest such structure in Western Europe.

Today, the station has transport aircraft flying in and out 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It is also where the bodies of servicemen killed in action overseas are repatriated.