RAF Leuchars

RAF Leuchars stood on the Fife coast and was in RAF use from the 1920s. In the Second World War it was a Coastal Command station flying reconnaissance and anti-shipping patrols over the North Sea in Avro Ansons, Lockheed Hudsons and later Bristol Beaufighters and de Havilland Mosquitoes — a Hudson from the station was involved in the RAF’s first action of the war on 4 September 1939. Through the Cold War it became one of Britain’s principal air-defence fighter bases, flying Hunters, Lightnings, Phantoms, Tornados and finally Typhoons on Quick Reaction Alert over the northern North Sea. The RAF handed it to the Army in 2015, and it is now Leuchars Station, with the airfield kept as a diversion strip.