RAF Huggate Wold

RAF Huggate Wold was a temporary airfield high on the Yorkshire Wolds, north-west of the village of Huggate in the East Riding. Surveyed earlier in the war as a possible bomber base — a role that went instead to nearby Full Sutton — it is remembered for a single week in October 1943, when the RAF laid a steel-mesh strip there and the North American Mustangs of Nos. 168 and 170 Squadrons, under No. 123 Airfield headquarters, flew continual take-offs and landings to test how the temporary surface stood up to fighter use ahead of the invasion of Europe. The strip was then lifted and the land returned to farming.