RAF Hawarden

RAF Hawarden lies in Flintshire, just over the Welsh border west of Chester, and grew out of a relief landing ground laid out in the late 1930s. Its wartime significance was twofold. Alongside the airfield rose a vast shadow factory operated by Vickers-Armstrongs, which built more than five thousand Vickers Wellington bombers and over two hundred Avro Lancasters during the war — one of the most productive aircraft plants in Britain. The airfield itself was an important training base: No. 7 Operational Training Unit formed here in June 1940 to convert pilots onto the Spitfire and Hurricane at the height of the Battle of Britain, and was soon renumbered No. 57 OTU, while a maintenance unit stored and serviced aircraft on a large scale. After the war de Havilland took over aircraft production, building Mosquitoes, Vampires and the Comet, followed by Hawker Siddeley’s HS 125 business jets. Today the site continues as Hawarden Airport and as the Airbus factory at Broughton, where the wings for every Airbus airliner are made.