RAF Grimsetter

Built on farmland at Grimsetter, a few miles south-east of Kirkwall, the station was commissioned in 1940 as part of the air defences ringing the great Royal Navy anchorage at Scapa Flow. Orkney’s importance as the home of the Home Fleet made fighter cover a priority, and Grimsetter served as a fighter station with an associated sector headquarters, at first operating as a satellite of nearby Skeabrae.

Three Spitfire squadrons passed through during the RAF years. No. 132 Squadron arrived in June 1942, followed by No. 129 and No. 234 Squadrons, their task the local air defence of the fleet and the islands. The RAF gave up the airfield in the spring of 1943, and on 6 July it was transferred on loan to the Admiralty. Commissioned as HMS Robin on 15 August 1943, it became a satellite of the Fleet Air Arm station at Hatston (HMS Sparrowhawk).

Under naval control a long succession of Fleet Air Arm squadrons used the field, flying types such as the Sea Hurricane, Seafire, Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair, again largely in defence of the Scapa Flow anchorage and in support of fleet operations in northern waters. HMS Robin paid off at the end of July 1945. The airfield passed to civil aviation control in 1948 and survives today as Kirkwall Airport, the principal gateway to Orkney.