RAF Catfoss

RAF Catfoss lay in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a few miles west of Hornsea near the village of Brandesburton. The airfield dated from the early 1930s and began life as a grass-surfaced armament and weapons-training station, hosting bomber and fighter units between the wars. No. 97 Squadron operated Handley Page Heyford biplane bombers here in the mid-1930s, and at the outbreak of the Second World War No. 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron flew Supermarine Spitfires from the station on air-defence duties.

From 1940 the airfield’s role shifted firmly towards training. No. 2 (Coastal) Operational Training Unit was based there, working up crews on Bristol Blenheims, Avro Ansons and Bristol Beaufighters, and three concrete runways were laid in late 1942 to support heavier flying. In 1944 the Central Gunnery School moved in, making Catfoss a key centre for instructing air gunners and fighter pilots in aerial gunnery before they joined operational squadrons.

The wartime station wound down and closed in November 1945. Catfoss saw a brief second life during the Cold War when No. 226 Squadron operated PGM-17 Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles from the site between 1959 and 1963. After the missiles were withdrawn the airfield closed for good, and the land has since been given over to farming and the Catfoss Industrial Estate.