RAF Eastleigh

RAF Eastleigh occupied the aerodrome on the northern edge of Southampton in Hampshire that had served as a flying ground since the First World War, when it had been used by the Royal Flying Corps and later by the United States Navy. In 1935 the Air Ministry leased part of the field, which the municipal authority had bought a few years earlier, as a reconditioning base under the name RAF Eastleigh; it was renamed RAF Southampton in August 1936. The site is best remembered for an event the previous spring: on 5 March 1936 the prototype Supermarine Spitfire, K5054, made its maiden flight from here.

The Royal Air Force tenure was brief. On the eve of war the airfield passed to the Admiralty, being commissioned on 1 July 1939 as the Royal Naval Air Station Eastleigh, HMS Raven. Under the Fleet Air Arm it functioned mainly as a training and assembly establishment, housing schools for naval fighters, observers, aircraft handling and safety equipment, while a long succession of squadrons passed through it flying types such as the Swordfish, Skua, Roc and Sea Gladiator.

Lying close to the south-coast aircraft industry, the station drew repeated Luftwaffe attention; a raid on 11 September 1940 struck the adjacent Cunliffe-Owen factory and killed dozens of workers. The Navy relinquished the base in 1946, after which it reverted to civil aviation and developed into today’s Southampton Airport.