RAF Hornchurch

RAF Hornchurch lies in the Ingrebourne valley on the eastern edge of London, on flat Essex farmland that was first marked out for military aviation in the autumn of 1915. The original landing ground, known as Sutton’s Farm, opened on 3 October 1915 as part of the London Air Defence Area, flying BE2c biplanes against German airships. On the night of 2 September 1916 Lieutenant William Leefe Robinson took off from Sutton’s Farm and shot down the Schutte-Lanz SL11 over Cuffley with incendiary ammunition, the first German airship destroyed over Britain; Robinson was awarded the Victoria Cross, and his fellow Hornchurch pilots Frederick Sowrey and Wulstan Tempest took DSOs for similar kills in the weeks that followed. The site was given up after the Armistice and reverted to farmland in 1919.

The Air Ministry requisitioned the land again in 1923, rebuilt it as a permanent station over four years, and reopened it in April 1928, renaming it RAF Hornchurch two months later. The first commanding officer was Squadron Leader Keith Park, leading No. 111 Squadron — the same Park who, as Air Vice-Marshal commanding No. 11 Group, would direct the southeastern half of the Battle of Britain from Uxbridge a dozen years later.

By the summer of 1940 Hornchurch was one of the Sector Stations of No. 11 Group Fighter Command, controlling its own and its satellites’ Spitfires through the daylight battle. Nos. 41, 54, 65 and 74 Squadrons were among the units that flew from its grass surface, and the pilots who passed through the dispersals included Al Deere, Adolph “Sailor” Malan and Robert Stanford Tuck. The Luftwaffe raided the station on roughly twenty occasions, hunting the Sector Operations Room and the dispersed Spitfires; the station kept flying through every attack. Squadrons from across the Commonwealth and the occupied nations rotated through during the war, including Czech, Polish, Free French, Canadian and Belgian units recorded on the station’s roll.

After 1945 Hornchurch’s role contracted as jet fighters demanded longer hard runways than its grass surface could provide. It served out its final years as the home of the RAF’s main Aircrew Selection Centre before closing on 1 July 1962. Much of the airfield was subsequently quarried for gravel and partly used as landfill, but the surviving northern portion was laid out as Hornchurch Country Park within the London Borough of Havering — 104.5 hectares along the River Ingrebourne, part of the Thames Chase Community Forest. Wartime pillboxes and Tett Turrets still stand among the grassland and reedbeds, preserved as a memorial to the station and the men who flew from it.