The 2024 AGM and dinner took place over the weekend of 25 -27 Oct based round the Village Hotel in Swindon. Amongst the hours spent catching up with old friends we did manage to take a few photos for the record. Many thanks to Terry Hulmes for coordinating a highly successful weekend.

REME Museum Lyneham

After the first round of socialising on Friday night 3 of us (Simon Covell, Terry Hulmes & Ian Harvey) headed to the REME museum at RAF Lyneham.

Before heading into the museum we wanted to visit the memorial to the crew of Hercules XV193 which was lost in 1993. Despite being “inside the wire” Ian managed to blag us through 2 layers of security to reach our objective which is located between the old Officers’ and Sergeants’ messes.

Onto the museum located in the former Officers’ Mess. In our opinion it’s worth a visit if you are passing. Don’t forget to ask for Veteran’s discount. No card needed – just recite your service number with confidence!

Lyneham Cemetery

Before returning to Swindon we paid our respects to former colleagues laid to rest in St Michael’s Church Lyneham. The site is now home to 2 memorial benches marking the loss of XV198 (Colerne 1973) & XV193 (Blair Atholl 1993).

Annual Dinner

It was then back to Swindon in time for the AGM which led straight into the Annual Dinner which was themed around the achievements of the B-24 Liberator. The evening was rounded off with an incredibly moving talk by Deborah Follett about the career of her friend and neighbour the late Sqn Ldr Ken Symonds. You can judge impact of Deborah’s speech by the number of people chatting to her after dinner. You can see the full presentation here.

Cheers everbody, hope to see you all in 2025.