RAF Christchurch

RAF Christchurch occupied the airfield at Somerford, on the eastern edge of Christchurch in Dorset, a flying ground first opened for civil use in the 1920s and taken over for military purposes after the outbreak of war. From 1941 it operated under Fighter Command, falling within Nos. 10 and 11 Groups, and it hosted a varied succession of units rather than a single resident squadron. Among them were elements of Nos. 89 and 622 Squadrons, an anti-aircraft co-operation unit and several RAF Regiment squadrons charged with airfield defence.

The station’s most distinctive wartime contribution lay away from front-line flying. The Air Defence Research and Development Establishment was based at the airfield, where specialist flights carried out early radar experiments, while the Airspeed company ran a production plant on the site that built de Havilland Mosquitoes and worked on the Horsa assault glider. In the run-up to the Normandy landings the field served as an advanced landing ground, and in the spring of 1944 the United States Army Air Forces’ 405th Fighter Group flew P-47 Thunderbolts from it before moving across to France in June.

After the war the airfield reverted to civil and manufacturing aviation, becoming associated with jet and aircraft production. Flying eventually ceased, and the site was cleared in 1966, the land afterwards given over to housing and industrial estates that occupy it today.