RAF Hibaldstow

RAF Hibaldstow lay in the flat country of north Lincolnshire, south-east of Scunthorpe, and opened in May 1941 as a satellite of nearby Kirton-in-Lindsey. Its main work was night-fighter defence: squadrons flying Boulton Paul Defiants and Bristol Beaufighters operated from here against the Luftwaffe’s night raiders, scoring their first victory over a Heinkel He 111 in June 1941, and a flight of Douglas Havocs experimented with airborne searchlights. From 1943 the station turned to fighter training. Hibaldstow is best remembered for an extraordinary incident in which a WAAF, Margaret Horton, was carried into the air clinging to the tail of a Spitfire when its pilot took off without realising she was still aboard holding it down against the wind — both she and the aircraft came down safely. After the war the airfield returned to agriculture; the control tower became a house, and the site is now a well-known civilian parachuting and skydiving centre.