RAF Firbeck

RAF Firbeck lay just west of the village of Firbeck in South Yorkshire, close to the Nottinghamshire border. The grass airfield had roots in pre-war civil flying, with a Sheffield aero club active on the site in the late 1930s, before it was pressed into military service after the outbreak of war.

The station’s main combat-related occupant was No. 613 Squadron, which formed there in early 1941 and operated the Westland Lysander in the army co-operation role. No. 2 Squadron passed through briefly with its own Lysanders in July 1941. Thereafter Firbeck served chiefly as a training and support field: it acted as a relief landing ground for No. 25 Elementary Flying Training School, and from 1942 hosted Air Observation Post units, including Nos. 654 and 659 Squadrons flying light Taylorcraft Auster spotter aircraft. Various gliding schools used the airfield through the mid-1940s.

Flying wound down as the war ended, and the station was given up in the years immediately afterwards. The site was returned to agriculture and the open landscape it occupies today, with a memorial marking its wartime role.