The county of Somerset has long-standing links with the RAF dating back to the 1920s when a facility was set up at Westonzoyland near the Somerset Levels.
Somerset was crucial to training RAF and other military personnel for work both at home and abroad during WW2 and post-war, RAF Locking on the outskirts of Weston-super-Mare seeing more than 30,000 tradesmen skilled up for the RAF and Fleet Air Arm from 1939-44. Aircraft production in the county was also crucial to the war effort from 1939-45, requiring the need for a number of decoy or Q-sites to be set up in a bid to prevent the Luftwaffe from hitting premises that included the Bristol factory at Weston-super-Mare.
RAF Charlton Horethorne
Opened: 1942
Closed: 1948
In a field on the north-western outskirts of the village of Charlton Horethorne, five miles south west of Wincanton, is an observation cupola which is one of the surviving signs that an airfield was located at the site, opening midway through WW2 as an RAF relief landing ground. However, soon after it was completed, it was assigned to the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm as a training establishment for the remainder of the war, reverting to RAF control in 1945 when it was used as a storage site and as satellite for RAF Old Sarum in Wiltshire, before Charlton Horethorne closed in 1948.
RAF Charmy Down
Opened: 1940
Closed: 1946
Opening in November 1940 to provide fighter defence for Bristol and the surrounding area, Charmy Down worked in conjunction with Wiltshire station Colerne, operating in part as a satellite for its sister site. The station offered night-flying facilities with a detachment of Hawker Hurricanes operated by No. 87 Squadron amongst its first arrivals, soon joined by Nos. 125 and 263 Squadrons.
(Two Hurricane Mark IIC night fighters of No. 87 Squadron at RAF Charmy Down)
In early 1944, the site situated three miles north of Bath was handed over to the USAAF to become a tactical depot, before returning to RAF control a year later when it was used by No. 3 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit until December 1945. The site was also used as reception centre for Australian airmen ahead of their return home, closing soon after the war ended.
RAF Culmhead
Opened: 1941
Closed: 1946
Originally known as Churchstanton when it first opened in August 1941 as a satellite fighter airfield, it was used by the fighters from RAF Exeter, its first arrivals the Polish squadrons Nos. 302 and 316, operating Hawker Hurricanes. The early arrivals were later joined by Czech squadrons Nos. 312 and 313, with Spitfires joining the Hurricanes, duties including sweeps against enemy targets and bomber escorts.
(Aerial photograph of RAF Churchstanton (as it was known then) 26 June 1942)
The large number of stations pre-fixed with ‘Church’ saw the name change to Culmhead in December 1943, a number of units passing through the site around eight miles south of Taunton, before many of its squadrons transferred to other locations and the airfield was utilised as glider training school before it closed in August 1946. In later years it became a wireless communications outstation for GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), its secretive work continuing until the late 1990s when the site became a business park.
In July 1944, RAF Culmhead witnessed a milestone in British aviation when No. 616 Squadron received the first two Gloster Meteor jet fighters to enter RAF squadron service. The aircraft arrived from Farnborough on 12 July and were used for familiarisation before the squadron moved to RAF Manston later that month, where Meteors went on to fly against V-1 flying bombs.
RAF Locking
Opened: 1939
Closed: 2000
Located around three miles east of Weston-super-Mare, RAF Locking opened in January 1939 after a government purchase of 250 acres of land to create an extensive training unit, handed the title of No. 5 School of Technical Training.
The central unit was used to skill new entrants in aircraft mechanics, airframes, carpentry, fabric working and parachute packing, training also provided for marine craft personnel; by the end of WW2 it had developed into a huge settlement, utilising the nearby airfield at RAF Weston-super-Mare (see below).
(Corner of 2T Building RAF Locking)
In May 1947, the first RAF boy entrant recruits arrived at Locking, a scheme offering 15 to 17-year-olds, whose education was not up to School Certificate level, technical training if they were nominated for the scheme, a project that lasted for several years. In 1950, No. 5 School of Technical Training was closed and Locking became home to No. 1 Radio School RAF, training communication specialists and officers, which stayed at the site until 1998.
RAF Lulsgate Bottom/Broadfield Down
Opened: 1940
Closed: 1946; now Bristol Airport
Lulsgate Bottom was established in September 1940 as a relief landing ground for No. 10 Elementary Flying Training School (EFTS), based at RAF Weston-super-Mare, the site around seven miles south west of Bristol providing a useful landing ground alternative to nearby Filton and Cardiff. A decoy or starfish site was set up near to Lulsgate Bottom during the Bristol Blitz in the spring of 1941, fires lit to draw Luftwaffe bombs away from civilian and other military sites.
In the summer of 1941 concrete runways were laid, the first aircraft to land on the new tarmac a Luftwaffe Ju 88 that was returning from a raid over Merseyside on 24 July 1941, only to be deceived by RAF electronic countermeasures, the crew believing they were in fact in France – enemy combatants were detained and the aircraft passed to No. 1426 (Enemy Aircraft) Flight for evaluation. The name Broadfield Down was used during development before the airfield formally opened as RAF Lulsgate Bottom in January 1942, and BOAC also used the site as a diversion airfield during the war.
(Present Day Bristol Airport)
The RAF left Lulsgate in October 1946, and in 1955 the airfield was sold to Bristol Corporation for the development of an airport which officially opened on May 1, 1957.
RAF North Stoke (Bath Racecourse)
RAF use began: 1943
One of Somerset’s lesser-known RAF sites was located at Bath Racecourse on Lansdown Hill. Known as RAF North Stoke, or North Stoke II, the grass airfield was used from May 1943 as a relief landing ground associated with RAF Lulsgate Bottom, providing additional space for training aircraft. It was used by No. 3 Flying Instructors School and No. 15 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit. Unlike the larger airfields in this article, North Stoke was not an independent RAF station.
RAF Merryfield
Opened: 1944
RAF flying operations ended: 1956; the airfield later became RNAS Merryfield, a Royal Naval Air Station satellite of Yeovilton
A site midway between Taunton and Yeovil on the historic Merryfield estate was chosen as an airfield midway through WW2, but it only opened in 1944 due to drainage issues, complete with three runways in the classic bomber A-formation. However, the airfield was only used for transport duties by both the RAF and USAAF, with 1500 American troops arriving in preparation for D-Day.
Merryfield played a direct role in the D-Day invasion. On the night of 5 June 1944, 94 C-47 Dakotas of the USAAF’s 441st Troop Carrier Group departed the airfield as part of Mission Albany, carrying American paratroopers to Normandy. The following morning, another 50 Dakotas took off towing Waco gliders.
(Douglas C-47A-25-DK Skytrain of the 301st)
The airfield initially closed in October 1946, reopening in 1951 as an advanced pilot training establishment, No. 208 Advanced Flying School (208 AFS) operating Gloster Meteors and de Havilland Vampires. The station later welcomed a detachment of No. 231 Operational Conversion Unit, OCU, with English Electric Canberras, and also saw test flights for Westland Wyverns, before operations were again run down in the early 1960s, the Royal Navy taking over the site in the early 1970s.
RAF Weston Zoyland
First RAF use: 1925
Closed: 1957
The county’s first RAF flying ground appeared in the mid-1920s, created in conjunction with the gunnery range at Watchet on the north Somerset coast – the station was named after the nearby village, Westonzoyland, situated 20 miles from Watchet and four miles south east of Bridgwater.
Aircraft operated from the station towing gunnery targets to Watchet, No. 100 Squadron first using the new station as a temporary camp for exercises, operating their biplane bombers. Despite the regular use, the site comprised of little more than a grass landing area, canvas hangars and several tents, the basic nature of the location remaining up to the start of WW2. In 1943, three tarmac runways were laid, its new-found status seeing squadrons moving out to make way for the arrival of the Douglas C-47s of the 442nd Troop Carrier Group from RAF Fulbeck in Nottinghamshire.
(C-47s of the 306th Troop Carrier Squadron)
In 1946, the station was placed under care and maintenance, reopening in June 1952 with No. 209 Advanced Flying School formed at Weston Zoyland with Gloster Meteors, before the arrival of several English Electric Canberra jet bomber squadrons using it as a work-up station prior to overseas deployment – some of the Canberras were used in the British atomic bomb tests in Maralinga in Australia. The station was effectively closed in December 1957, but it was retained by the Air Ministry for a further decade.
RAF Weston-super-Mare
RAF use began: 1939
RAF gliding activity ended: 1993
The site was previously a municipal civilian airport in the early 1930s, part of aviation pioneer Sir Alan Cobham’s scheme to persuade local authorities to create their own airfields, the RAF’s nearby School of Technical Training utilising the facilities from the late 1930s before formally taking control of the station in May 1940. A new main runway was laid and a factory constructed to manufacture Bristol Beaufighters which were flown out from the station, the production facility requiring a decoy airfield nearby at Bleadon to be set up in an attempt to divert the attentions of the Luftwaffe.
The station also became home to No. 286 Squadron operating Hawker Hurricanes, Boulton Paul Defiants and Airspeed Oxfords, providing anti-aircraft gun practice, with an Aircraft Torpedo Development Unit also created at the site that used the nearby Bristol Channel for testing.
(Old aircraft hangar still visible today)
Training in conjunction with Locking continued post-war while civilian flights resumed from Weston-super-Mare, the on-site factory focusing later on helicopter production, becoming part of Westland in 1960 before the Weston division closed in 2002, the site housing the Helicopter Museum, which opened in 1989. The Bristol Belvedere was also developed at Weston-super-Mare, where its prototype first flew on 5 July 1958.
