At the end of May, Museum artefacts were used to enhance a flower display at the Chichester Cathedral Festival of Flowers. Keren Dean Taylor asked the Museum to assist her in creating a display entitled ‘Vapour Trails in the Sky’.
She asked the Curator, David Coxon, if flowers were grown during the war on the airfield and he remembered what happened when Squadron Leader Desmond Scott ordered his pilots to tidy up the muddy ground in front of the No 486 RNZAF Squadron dispersals. In his book ‘Typhoon Pilot’ Scott describes what he saw on returning from a course in Scotland: “On arriving back at Tangmere I could hardly believe my eyes. They had not only cleaned up the area, but had set out lawns, white pebble paths and ornamental gardens already planted with aster, marigolds and small shrubs. The lawns had already been laid in square blocks of turf. I knew this had not been found on the station, but I did not enquire too closely. The mystery was solved some days later when an irate farmer complained that my boys had ‘borrowed’ the turf from him!”.
The photograph shows Keren’s interpretation of a No 486 Squadron dispersal at RAF Tangmere in 1943.
