RAF Culmhead/church Stanton

Sited on high ground near Churchstanton in the Blackdown Hills of Somerset, this fighter airfield opened on 1 August 1941 as RAF Church Stanton. It was renamed RAF Culmhead on 22 December 1943 to avoid confusion with RAF Church Fenton in Yorkshire. For most of the war the station belonged to RAF Fighter Command, operating under No. 10 Group, which defended the south-west of England and covered approaches from the south coast.

The airfield is most strongly associated with the Allied national squadrons that flew from it. Polish units, including Nos. 302, 306 and 316 Squadrons, and Czechoslovak units such as Nos. 312 and 313 Squadrons, operated Hawker Hurricanes and later Supermarine Spitfires here, alongside RAF squadrons including Nos. 66, 131, 165 and 504. The Royal Navy also used the site, with Seafire-equipped naval fighter squadrons passing through. Culmhead earned a place in aviation history in 1944 when No. 616 Squadron took delivery of Gloster Meteors there, working up Britain’s first operational jet fighter before deploying it against V-1 flying bombs.

In 1944 the station passed to RAF Flying Training Command under No. 23 Group, and flying activity wound down towards the war’s end; it closed in August 1946. From the 1950s the site served as a Composite Signals Organisation Station linked to GCHQ. Surviving wartime structures, including control towers and fighter pens, are now protected as scheduled monuments, and part of the former airfield has become an industrial estate.