RAF Holme-on-spalding-moor

RAF Holme-on-Spalding-Moor stood in the flat farmland of the East Riding of Yorkshire and opened in 1941 as a Bomber Command station. Its first occupants were No. 458 Squadron RAAF, an Australian unit, and for a time No. 101 Squadron flew Avro Lancasters from the field. When Bomber Command redrew its group boundaries in June 1943 the station passed to No. 4 Group, and No. 76 Squadron and its Handley Page Halifaxes made Holme their home for the rest of the war in Europe, flying against targets across Germany. When the war ended No. 4 Group transferred to Transport Command and the airfield’s aircraft turned from bombing to transport work, flying Dakotas. In the postwar decades Holme had a remarkable second life as a flight-test airfield: Blackburn Aircraft and its successors Hawker Siddeley and British Aerospace used it for trials of the Buccaneer and other types until it finally closed in 1983. Many of its buildings survive as an industrial estate, with a memorial at the entrance.