RAF Biggin Hill

RAF Biggin Hill occupies a chalk ridge in the London Borough of Bromley, roughly fourteen miles south-southeast of central London, at an elevation of just under 600 feet. The Royal Flying Corps arrived in February 1917, transferring in from Joyce Green to take over the Cudham Lodge estate; Koonowla House had already been requisitioned the previous year for wireless experiments, and nearby Aperfield Court was pressed into service as a radio transmitter and ground-control station. 141 Squadron RFC flew Bristol Fighters from the new airfield against Zeppelin and Gotha raiders, fixing Biggin Hill’s identity as a London air-defence post from the outset.

Between the wars the station hosted experimental work on instruments, anti-aircraft gunnery and night flying, and was rebuilt between 1929 and 1932 with the permanent hangars and married quarters that would carry it into the next war. By 1939 Biggin Hill was one of the principal Sector Stations of No. 11 Group, Fighter Command, controlling the sector that screened the southeastern approaches to London.

In the summer of 1940 Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons rotated through the airfield in rapid succession, among them 32, 79, 92, 141, 213, 501, 600, 601, 609, 610 and 611. Between August 1940 and January 1941 the Luftwaffe struck the station twelve times; the worst attack killed thirty-nine on the ground and wrecked workshops, stores, barracks and the WAAF quarters. The squadrons flying from the cratered field were eventually credited with 1,400 enemy aircraft destroyed, at a cost of 453 Biggin Hill aircrew killed. Canadian, Polish, Free French, New Zealand, Australian and Rhodesian units (including 340, 401, 416, 421 and 485 Squadrons) flew alongside the British squadrons through the offensive sweeps of 1941-44.

After the war the station passed briefly to Transport Command and then back to fighters, with Spitfires giving way to Meteors and Hunters of regular and reserve units. It ceased to be an operational RAF station in 1958 and ran on as the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre while civil traffic, displaced by the closure of Croydon, moved in alongside. The freehold is held by the London Borough of Bromley and a long lease operates the site as London Biggin Hill Airport; a small RAF presence remains in the Air Training Corps’ 2427 Squadron. St George’s Chapel of Remembrance, erected in 1951 with replica Hurricane and Spitfire gate guardians outside, commemorates the airmen who flew from the ridge.