Tuesday, May 24, 2011

"There will be a future but RAF Kinloss will sadly not be a part of it."

The Kinloss squadrons being addressed by the Lord Lieutenant of Moray

Large crowds gathering for the farewell parade

The words from the title of this post spoken by the 25th and last Station Commander of RAF Kinloss today in Forres as the Moray town bid farewell to the RAF. It was an emotional ceremony, RAF Kinloss and Forres have a special relationship, they are the same community really and it is hard to begin to imagine the closure of the base. But it is happening and today RAF Kinloss marched off into history watched by thousands of Moray citizens.

A few more pictures here.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is a very sad day that Kinloss is closing, and the surrounding towns will poorer for them leaving both financially and for their input to the social framework here.
McDermotts closed after 20 years here but no one seemed to care much for the consequences, but today we see it with the empty highstreet.

Jim said...

Gurn, you must have been standing in front of me at one point. I have similar shots, (OK, yours are better) and one or two with rain on the UV filter too!

As you say, an extremely sad occasion for Forres. There's an exhibition of Kinloss memorabilia at Forres Museum until the end of May.

There was a rumour that an army regiment returning from Germany might take over the RAF Kinloss camp, but another tale said they preferred to go to Leuchars because it's handier for St. Andrews for the golfers!

Anonymous said...

Kinloss web page

http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafkinloss/

Lossie web pages

http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/sdsrpersonnel.cfm

http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/strategicdefenceandsecurityreview.cfm

Jim said...

Dear Anonymous (the last one)

Tha final link you give, http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/strategicdefenceandsecurityreview returns an error (page not found)

Could you check that one please?

Anonymous said...

Jim clicked through on link from Gurn posted under anon and got to page straight away but here is the page link again

http://www.raf.mod.uk/news/strategicdefenceandsecurityreview.cfm

it looks like .cfm missed of your link?

Jim said...

Sorry, Anon, still can't get anything on the latest link mentioned. Maybe the URL is being chopped short by the system on this blog.

Could you set up a TinyURL for it, do you think?

Graisg said...

Links have to be copy and paste unless they are put in with a tiny piece of code.

Try this handy piece of code on this blog article

Jim said...

Thanks, Gurn, but I was using copy-and-paste, and still can't get the page.

However I looked around the RAF News site. Is this the item that our friend Anon was referring to?

http://tinyurl.com/3t4uh2p