RAF Hamworthy

On the edge of Poole Harbour in Dorset, Hamworthy was a flying-boat and seaplane base rather than a conventional aerodrome, the harbour itself serving as the runway. The station was commissioned in August 1942, taking over flying-boat work as the waters at Plymouth Sound grew too congested, and operated under No. 19 Group of RAF Coastal Command. It was also known as RAF Poole and, to the Royal Navy, as HMS Turtle.

Its best-known resident was No. 461 Squadron RAAF, an Australian unit raised under the Empire Air Training Scheme and equipped with Short Sunderland flying boats. Operating about ten Sunderlands from Poole, the squadron flew long anti-submarine patrols over the South-Western Approaches and the Bay of Biscay, hunting the U-boats that threatened the Atlantic convoys, before moving on to Pembroke Dock in April 1943. No. 210 Squadron, flying Consolidated Catalinas with detachments as far afield as Gibraltar, also used the base in 1943.

Alongside the military squadrons the harbour was used by BOAC for civil flying-boat services. RAF Hamworthy closed in 1948, and Poole’s days as a flying-boat port came to an end.