The Royal Aircraft Establishment Bedford - Its Life and Times
 

The Royal Aircraft Establishment produced a house magazine for its staff called, not surprisingly, “RAE News”. Published monthly from March 1948 to August 1985, then bimonthly until its last issue in Nov/Dec 1991, it featured news of staff in relation both to work activities and also social events: dramatic societies, athletics meetings, marriages and more; and also reported on highlights of the work of RAE.
 

While the magazine was Farnborough-based, and clearly focussed on “head office”, it also included material from “out-stations” such as Bedford and Cardington.
 

Mike Dobson, former Chief Superintendent at RAE Bedford, examined all 488 issues for references to Bedford and Cardington personnel and work. He has compiled this information into a document entitled “The Royal Aircraft Establishment Bedford – Its Life & Times”. It is large, as it contains reproductions of pages, including pictures, from RAE News, together with supplementary comments. For convenience, it has been split into 4 volumes, roughly covering the 4 decades.
 

The BAHG team has reviewed and edited this compilation and now publishes Volume 1, for the period March 1948 to December 1959, together with separate Annexes of longer articles. We in BAHG hope it will be of interest to past employees and their families. Further volumes will follow. All comments welcome.

“Release 1” contains, in downloadable pdf format, the following documents:-
 

Introduction
 

Life and Times Volume 1, 1950s. (54MByte download) 

Please note: this Volume is quite large, we recommend you download this once, and save it.

Index to Volume 1

Annexes to Volume 1

The Group always welcomes the support of former RAE employees
 

Web design by FBM