RAF Harrowbeer

RAF Harrowbeer stood high on the western edge of Dartmoor at Yelverton in Devon, a few miles north of Plymouth, and opened on 15 August 1941. As a fighter station in No. 10 Group of Fighter Command it guarded the South-West approaches and the great naval port of Plymouth, flying offensive sweeps, convoy patrols and fighter-bomber sorties against targets on the occupied French coast. Spitfires and, later, Hawker Typhoons operated from its three runways, and the station became an important centre for air-sea rescue: No. 276 Squadron made its headquarters here, its Walrus amphibians and Ansons plucking ditched aircrew from the Channel. More than forty squadrons passed through during the war, among them Polish and Czechoslovak fighter units, and the airfield played a busy supporting part in the D-Day operations of 1944. In August 1945 the newly inaugurated US President Harry Truman landed here on his way home from the Potsdam Conference. The station closed in 1950; much of the ground has since returned to open moorland and light industry, marked by a memorial to those who served.