RAF Cark

RAF Cark, also known as Cark-in-Cartmel or Flookburgh, opened in 1941 on the Cartmel Peninsula near the villages of Cark and Flookburgh, in what was then Lancashire and is now part of Cumbria. It began life under Fighter Command as a station within No. 9 Group, charged with helping to defend the industrial areas of north-west England.

In March 1942 the airfield’s role shifted decisively when it passed to Flying Training Command’s No. 25 Group. From then on it served chiefly as a training and support station rather than a front-line fighter base. A Staff Pilot Training Unit operated a varied fleet that included Hawker Hurricanes, Supermarine Spitfires, Miles Martinets, Avro Ansons and Tiger Moths, while a succession of anti-aircraft co-operation units — among them No. 1 and No. 6 AACU and No. 1614 Flight — flew gunnery-training exercises. Detachments from Nos. 289, 290 and 650 Squadrons also used the airfield.

Active RAF flying wound down as the war ended, and the station was reduced to care and maintenance before being given up in the mid-1940s. From 1944 it had also hosted an Air Training Corps gliding school. After the Air Ministry sold the site it returned to civilian use, and the former airfield later became home to gliding, parachuting and other leisure activities, alongside farmland and light development.