5001 Airfield Construction Sqn RAF

The RAF have a long history of building airfields and their busiest time was during WW2. 5001 Airfield Construction Squadron RAF worked out the end of their existence at Operation Crown. Shortly after they departed from Thailand they were absorbed into the Corps of Royal Engineers and became 51 Fd Sqn (Airfields) RE. Sqn Ldr R M Sidey was the C O and Plant Officer of the 5001 Sqn. Warrant Officer William Wyndham Lewis was the senior NCO. Amongst the other personnel of 5001 were Jeremy White, Graham Large, Tom Gould and Doug Robinson who's stories and pictures are linked to this page.

The image left was taken by Graham Large from the LST Empire Gannet (see rollover), as she is towed out of Singapore harbour sometime early in 1964. On board are the men and machines of 5001 Airfield Construction Sqn RAF. They were bound for Bangkok aboard a vessel that had no Radar so they hugged the coastline. They wallowed along in a flat bottomed boat at a speed of ten knots and many of them were seasick. Graham Large recounts an incident on that voyage HERE.

After disembarking in Bangkok harbour, the Sqn personnel worked a long day preparing the heavy plant and vehicles for the journey ahead. They finished at midnight and as the journey was due to start 0400 hrs, this left very little time for sleep. It seems that sleep was not a priority however, as WOII Wyndham Lewis records in his memoirs HERE. The convoy also had Army vehicles and plant and as the RAF had no transport of their own, they found themselves in the back of a Royal Engineers Bedford RL.

The journey they were about to undergo was like nothing they had done before. A drive of one hundred and sixty miles to Korat and an overnight stay at a US Army base there. After exiting the outskirts of Bangkok, they did not travel very far before the tarmacadam surface gave way to dirt road. It was the dry season and Thailand's roads at that time were very poor. The surface could be hard and corrugated or dusty and rutted. The wooden bridges were rickety and weak. Hazardous, does not begin to describe it.

The convoy like a number of others that made the journey, stopped at the US Army 44th Engineer (Construction) Group
Camp Friendship in Korat. They stayed in semi-permanent tent like structures (see 'Hooches' rollover) with duckboard walkways. They were able to indulge in American Army food and drink. They stayed for three days so that repairs could be made to sick vehicles and to prepare for the even longer journey that lay ahead between Korat and Ubon.

The journey to Ubon and then Loeng Nok Tha would be much longer than the previous one as described by WO II Lewis HERE. On arrival at Loeng Nok Tha, the Sqn personnel lived in the tented camp and worked on building the permanent camp as Graham Large described on his page HERE Other plant operators worked on clearing the forest and moving thousands of tons of soil to create the runway profile. Jeremy White and Tom Gould operated Euclid scrapers from the very start of the project and tell their stories HERE