RAF Skellingthorpe

RAF Skellingthorpe, on the low ground of Black Moor a few miles south-west of Lincoln, opened in 1941 as a No. 5 Group bomber station. Its two principal squadrons were No. 50, which arrived in late 1941 and worked up from the Handley Page Hampden through the troubled Avro Manchester to the Lancaster, and No. 61, which came in from Syerston with Lancasters in November 1943; both flew from Skellingthorpe until the end of the war in Europe. Several Australian-manned squadrons also passed through the station.

Skellingthorpe’s losses were among the heaviest of any Lincolnshire airfield: more than two hundred aircraft were lost and close to two thousand airmen killed flying from it. It was from here, on the thousand-bomber raid against Cologne on the night of 30–31 May 1942, that Flying Officer Leslie Manser of No. 50 Squadron held his crippled Manchester steady long enough for his crew to bale out, going down with the aircraft and earning a posthumous Victoria Cross.

The airfield closed in the early 1950s after a spell with maintenance units. Much of it was later swallowed by Lincoln’s growth — the Birchwood housing estate and the city bypass were built across it — and a memorial and heritage room now keep the station’s memory.