- RAF Zeals
RAF Zeals was a wartime
Royal Air Force station inWiltshire .The station was sited to the north of the village of
Zeals , next to the village of Stourton and the Stourhead estate.The station was only in operation from 1942 to 1946. In that time it was successively occupied by the
Royal Air Force , theUnited States Air Force and theRoyal Navy .From opening until August 1943 the site was used by the RAF as a base for
Hawker Hurricane andSupermarine Spitfire fighters.In August 1943 it was transferred to the United States Army Air Force with the intention of using the airfield for maintenance of
C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft. However, the damp conditions prevented e operation of heavy aircraft soP-47 Thunderbolt fighters were flown from Zeals instead. From March 1944, it returned to the RAF who used it as a base forde Havilland Mosquito fighters against German bombers.Following
D-Day , the RAF used the airfield formilitary glider training in preparation for action againstJapan . In April 1945 the base was taken over by the Royal Navy (as HMS "Hummingbird" orRNAS Zeals ) who used the airfield foraircraft carrier training.The site was closed down from January 1946 and in June it was returned to farmland. As of 2006, the control tower, now a private house, remains on Bells Lane in Zeals.
A memorial stands at nearby Beech Knoll in Stourton to mark the site where a Dakota transport plane crashed in February 1945, killing more than twenty people. The aircraft had taken off from Zeals airfield to return to
Lincolnshire after two weeks of glider training and flew into some cloud-covered beech trees on the knoll.ee also
*
List of RAF stations quadrons operating
*
No. 66 Squadron RAF [http://www.rafweb.org/Stations/Stations-Y.htm#Zeals]
*No. 118 Squadron RAF
*No. 132 Squadron RAF
*No. 174 Squadron RAF
*No. 184 Squadron RAF
*No. 263 Squadron RAF
*No. 286 Squadron RAF
*No. 410 Squadron RAF
*No. 421 Squadron RAF
*No. 488 Squadron RAF
*No. 604 Squadron RAF References
External links
*http://www.rafweb.org/Stations/Stations-Y.htm#Zeals
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