RAF Doncaster

RAF Doncaster lay beside Doncaster Racecourse in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now South Yorkshire. The site’s aviation links reached back to 1909, when the racecourse hosted one of Britain’s earliest flying meetings, and a military aerodrome was laid out alongside it during the First World War for the Royal Flying Corps. The grass field never grew into a major front-line base, but it served the RAF in several supporting roles over the following decades.

In November 1938 No. 616 (South Yorkshire) Squadron of the Auxiliary Air Force was formed at Doncaster. The station’s most significant wartime tenant, however, was No. 271 Squadron, raised here in 1940 as a transport unit and based at Doncaster until early 1944. The squadron later flew the Douglas Dakota, and one of its pilots, Flight Lieutenant David Lord, was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross for pressing home a supply drop over Arnhem on 19 September 1944 despite his burning aircraft. Doncaster also operated as a Dakota modification centre during 1944.

Military flying ended in the years after the war, and the airfield passed to civil use before finally closing to aircraft. Several original buildings survived and now house the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum, preserving the station’s long association with flight.