RAF Dunkeswell

RAF Dunkeswell stood on high ground in East Devon, a few miles north of Honiton, and opened in 1943 after construction by George Wimpey and Company. Although originally laid out with RAF Fighter Command and later Coastal Command in mind, the station’s wartime career belonged almost entirely to American maritime aircrew. From the summer of 1943 it housed the USAAF’s 479th Antisubmarine Group flying B-24 Liberators, before passing to the US Navy.

For the rest of the war Dunkeswell was a base for Fleet Air Wing 7 and a succession of US Navy patrol-bombing squadrons, among them VB-103, VB-105 and VB-110, operating PB4Y-1 Liberators on long anti-submarine sweeps over the Bay of Biscay. It was the first US Navy unit to train alongside the RAF. Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest brother of the future President, flew with VB-110 from the airfield before his death on a volunteer mission in August 1944.

After the Americans left, the RAF returned the station to its own use, hosting a ferry unit and No. 265 Maintenance Unit, and later employing the field as a relief landing ground until military flying ended in the mid-1950s. The Ministry of Defence sold the site, which survives today as a civil aerodrome used for general aviation, flight training and parachuting, with a small museum recalling its wartime past.