RAF Charmy Down

RAF Charmy Down was a wartime airfield laid out on high ground at Swainswick, a few miles north of Bath in Somerset. It opened in November 1940 and spent most of its operational life under Fighter Command’s No. 10 Group, charged with the air defence of the Bristol and Bath area. The site was given three concrete runways meeting at angles, ringed by blister hangars and dispersed buildings.

A long succession of fighter units passed through. No. 87 Squadron flew Hawker Hurricanes in the night-fighter role, while other tenants brought Westland Whirlwinds, Spitfires and the experimental Turbinlite Havocs that paired a searchlight-carrying aircraft with a fighter. No. 417 Squadron RCAF was formed at the station in November 1941, and training units including No. 52 Operational Training Unit and the Fighter Leaders School also made use of the field.

From 1943 the airfield was handed to the United States Army Air Forces as station AAF-487, hosting a tactical air depot and later night-fighter squadrons. RAF use returned towards the war’s end, and the field briefly served an Air Training Corps gliding school before closing in October 1946. The land reverted to farming; the control tower survives as a private house, and a memorial to those who served was unveiled in 2019.