Digby
*DIGBY: Military aerodrome (Originally RAF SCOPWICK until July 1920)
Note: The second picture was obtained from Google Earth ©
Although flying activity ceased a long time ago, RAF Digby was still operational in 2018, and, the original airfield is still clearly visible.
Military users: WW1: RAF Training Station and School
Between the wars:
25 Sqdn (DH.9s)
2 FTS (Flying Training School) (Avro 504Ks)
WW2: RAF Fighter Command 12 Group
*Battle of Britain RAF Sector Station (10th July 1940) 12 Group
29 Squadron (Bristol Blenheims)
46 Sqdn (Hawker Hurricanes)
611 Squadron (Vickers-Supermarine Spitfires) 1st August 1940, all three Sqdns still here?
By the 1st September 1940 29 Sqdn had moved to WELLINGORE but 46 and 611 Sqdn remained here
WW2
151 & 229 Sqdns (Hawker Hurricanes)
92 & 222 Sqdns (Vickers-Supermarine Spitfires)
402, 411, 412, 421 & 443 (all RCAF) Sqdns (Vickers-Supermarine Spitfires)
288 Sqdn (Hurricanes, Spitfires & Boulton-Paul Defiants)
Note: Did 288 Squadron fly all three of these types whilst based here?)
609 (West Riding) Sqdn (Spitfires)
611 (West Lancashire) Sqdn (Spitfires)
Post WW2: 527 [Radar Calibration Unit] Sqdn (Vickers-Supermarine Spitfires)
Location: About 1nm NW of Ashby de la Launde, SWW of Scopwick village on the B1191 close to the B1188 junction, 6.5nm NNW of Sleaford), 10nm SSE of Lincoln
Period of operation: 1918 to ? (Apparently operational in 1985 at least)
Site area: WW1: 250 acres 1280 x 914 (A large airfield for this period)
Runways: N/S 1143 grass E/W 960 grass
NE/SW 1280 grass
NOTES: In the early to mid 1930s the Armstrong Whitworth ‘dual-control’ Atlas type was employed here for flying training.
It came as a considerable surprise to learn, when starting research for this Guide that the Bristol Blenheim was used by RAF Fighter Command. I’d always regarded the type and the variants as being a fairly useless bomber. I suppose this shouldn’t have been such a surprise if I’d bothered to look more closely at what was going on during this period? A direct comparison with the Me.110 could be made?
In his book The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Jarrod Cotter explains this period in the remarkable history of Spitfire Mk.Vb AB910; “AB910’s final active service before being ‘demobbed’ was with 527 Squadron, a radar calibration unit based at Digby, with which it remained until 30 May 1946. In 1947 AB910 was purchased by Group Captain Alan Wheeler and was placed on the civil register as G-AISU for air racing. After a heavy landing during the King’s Cup Air Race in 1953, it was returned to Vickers-Armstrong where it was refurbished and subsequently flown regularly by Jeffrey Quill, the famous Spitfire test pilot, until being donated to the Flight in 1965.”
Peter Ziegler
This comment was written on: 2017-06-03 21:01:25Thx for the info Peter
Terry Clark
This comment was written on: 2018-01-07 00:07:37Digby was still an RAF station into the '90s. I remember a feture in the National Air Traffic Services staff newspaper telling how NATS technicians were being sent on 'aerial rigger's' courses run by the RAF. When I was at ATC camp at Cranwell in 1990, we drove into Lincoln one day and looking across at Digby, we could see a large number of Bloodhound mssiles on the airfield having just been withdrawn from RAF staions in Germany.
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