Luce Bay
LUCE BAY: Military Airship Station later military and civil aerodrome (Later RAF WEST FREUGH see seperate listing)
Military users: RNAS (Royal Naval Air Service)
Class B Airship Station (Submarine Scout non-rigid airships) 1915 to 1919
RAF Marine Operations Station 1918 to 1919
258 Sqdn (Airco DH.6)
Civil user: 1925: Northern Air lines
Location: 4.5nm SE of Stranrear, (possibly on the area known as Torrs Warren?)
Period of operation: Military 1915 to 1919 Civil: 1925 only?
Note: In 1937 this site was redeveloped as RAF WEST FREUGH.
Site area: 444 acres 2076 x 1399
NOTES: During WW1, mainly in the last period of the war, a considerable number of anti-submarine patrols and convoy escort duties were made by their airships and even looked at kindly, appears a total waste of effort - or was it?. Very few attacks were made and I believe even these were ineffective. This work must have been hugely frustrating to the airmen involved.
However, the German Admiralty later acknowledged that these air patrols had been a strong deterrent to their U-boat commanders - so who knows? Perhaps they really did save further loss of life in these waters. As decades later the Cold War appears to have proved, a strong military deterrent is often far more effective at preventing wholesale carnage, than direct military action. Also, in WW2 it was acknowleged that once long range aircraft became available, just sighting an aircraft quickly caused German U-Boats to submerge, preventing them from making an attack.
Later in June 1918 the RAF formed No.258 Sqdn here flying the obsolete DH.6 type on Special Duty Flights which included anti-submarine patrols. 258 Sqdn disbanded in Dec 1918 and the last airship, (S.S.Z..20), was deflated in May 1919.
Sub-Stations for 'mooring-out' purposes were at Ballyliffan now in Ireland, Larne in Northern Ireland, Machrihanish in western Scotland and Ramsey on the Isle of Man.
NORTHERN AIR LINES
In 1925 Northern Air Lines, in what might be thought of today as a rather desperate attempt to establish a long term and viable scheduled service carrying newspapers from THE SWIFTS in Carlisle to MALONE near Belfast based their DH.9 G-EBJX here. For use when the sister DH.9 G-EBJW couldn’t depart from Carlisle. The newspapers travelling by rail to Stranraer, then by car to the airfield. For the pilots attempting to fly this and similar early commercial routes it was often sheer misery let alone being incredibly dangerous by today’s criteria. Read Wg Cdr MacIntosh’s autobiography All Weather Mac to get a much better idea.
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