RAF East Kirkby
England — County: Lincolnshire
ⓘ licence & credit
Royal Air Force official photographer F/O Forward, 1944 — BBC war correspondent Richard North interviews the crew of Avro Lancaster 'S for Sugar' of No. 630 Squadron RAF at East Kirkby, Lincolnshire (IWM CH 12778) (via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)About
RAF East Kirkby was built by John Laing & Son in 1942–43 on farmland south of Horncastle and opened on 20 August 1943 as a heavy-bomber station of No. 5 Group. Two Avro Lancaster squadrons flew from it: No. 57 Squadron, which arrived within a week of the station opening, and No. 630 Squadron, formed there that November. Between them they mounted more than two hundred wartime operations, at a cost of over 120 Lancasters failing to return and others lost in crashes.
The station’s worst day came not over Germany but at home. On 17 April 1945, during bombing-up for a raid, a fully armed 1,000-lb bomb detonated on the ground, destroying six Lancasters, damaging many more and killing several airmen. After VE-Day the squadrons prepared to join Tiger Force for the planned war against Japan, and through the 1950s the airfield was used for several years by United States Air Force air-rescue units before it closed in 1958.
East Kirkby has since become one of the best known of all the Lincolnshire bomber stations. The Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre occupies part of the site around its restored control tower and is home to the taxiable Lancaster NX611, “Just Jane”.
Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including Bomber County Aviation Resource — East Kirkby airfield history and Wikipedia: RAF East Kirkby. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.
Photographs
ⓘ licence & credit
Richard Hoare / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pillbox_at_the_former_RAF_station_at_East_Kirkby_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2818980.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
Richard Hoare / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Control_Tower_and_the_signalling_square_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2815960.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
John Goldsmith / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Control_tower_and_hangar,_East_Kirkby_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2579893.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
Mick Lobb / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Air_Traffic_Tower_and_Windsock_-_East_Kirkby_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3123236.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
Mick Lobb / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Air_Traffic_Control_Tower_-_East_Kirkby_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3123267.jpgView source & full licence →Home to
- No. 57 Squadron — 5 Group
- No. 630 Squadron — 5 Group
People connected to this base
21 persons cross-referenced to this airfield — through a posting here, a squadron based here, or aircrew who flew from it.
| Name | Rank | Connection | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bryans, Harold Bernard | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Clark, Ronald Leslie | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Coffey, Harry Morley | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Drake, Alan George | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Farnell, Ernest Arthur | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| France, William Edward | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Goring, Norman | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Green, Kelvin Carlyle | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Guthrie, Robert Martin | Flying Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Headlam, John Philip | Flying Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Hughes, Thomas | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Jeffery, George William | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Johnson, Allan George Garth | Flying Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Jones, William Donnan | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Langlands, John Ogilvie | Flying Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| McGill, Arthur Henry | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Menell, David Victor | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Pearson, William | Warrant Officer Class II | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Smith, Roy I | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Watts, Geoffrey Ernest | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Worboys, Norman | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |