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Royal Navy Air Station Rattray or RNAS Rattray (HMS ''Merganser'') and also known as Crimond Airfield, Crimond Aerodrome or Rattray Aerodrome was a Royal Naval Air Station near
Crimond Crimond is a village in Aberdeenshire, in the northeast of Scotland, located northwest of the port of Peterhead and just over from the coast. Geography The main A90 road runs through Crimond and is lined by Crimond Church with a villag ...
,
Aberdeenshire Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially differe ...
.


History

The station started to be built from March 1943, with
774 Naval Air Squadron 774 Naval Air Squadron (774 NAS) was a Naval Air Squadron of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land ...
moving in from July 1943 for
Telegraphist A telegraphist (British English), telegrapher (American English), or telegraph operator is an operator who uses a telegraph key to send and receive the Morse code in order to communicate by land lines or radio. During the Great War the Roya ...
Air Gunners training but the site was not commissioned until 3 October 1944. The base then switched to training Torpedo Bombing Reconnaissance crews. The following units were here at some point: * 708 Naval Air Squadron: *
714 Naval Air Squadron 714 Naval Air Squadron was a squadron of the British Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. It was first formed as 714 (Catapult) Flight on 15 July 1936, by renumbering 406 (Catapult) Flight, and operated Fairey IIIF floatplanes from cruisers in the East I ...
(May 1944-unknown) *
717 Naval Air Squadron 717 Naval Air Squadron (717 NAS) was a Naval Air Squadron of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land a ...
(November 1944-unknown) * 753 Naval Air Squadron * 766 Naval Air Squadron *
769 Naval Air Squadron 769 Naval Air Squadron (769 NAS) was a Naval Air Squadron of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. During 1943 the unit moved to RNAS East Haven (HMS Peewit) RNAS East Haven (HMS Peewit) is a former satellite Royal Naval Air Station located near E ...
*
774 Naval Air Squadron 774 Naval Air Squadron (774 NAS) was a Naval Air Squadron of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land ...
(July 1943-August 1945) * 815 Naval Air Squadron *
817 Naval Air Squadron 817 Naval Air Squadron was a unit of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War. In 1941, the squadron operated Fairey Albacore aircraft in the Anti-Submarine Warfare role in Icelandic and Mediterranean waters. The Squadron was ...
*
818 Naval Air Squadron 818 Naval Air Squadron was a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm carrier-based squadron formed in August 1939. It served on a number of the Navy's aircraft carriers during the Second World War, serving in most of the theatres of the war, before decommissi ...
*
821 Naval Air Squadron 821 Naval Air Squadron was a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm carrier based squadron formed on 3 April 1933 with the transferral and amalgamation of the Fairey III aircraft from 446 and half of 455 Flight (Fleet Spotter Reconnaissance) Flights Royal Ai ...
*
825 Naval Air Squadron 825 Naval Air Squadron is a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Naval Air Squadron which was re-commissioned on 10 October 2014 and currently flies the AgustaWestland Wildcat HMA2. It was a carrier-based squadron that was formed on 8 October 1934 from the ...
The base was closed in 1946, being moved into a state of care & maintenance. It was also used as a Royal Naval Wireless Station until 2004.


Current use

The site is home to a
high frequency High frequency (HF) is the ITU designation for the range of radio frequency electromagnetic waves (radio waves) between 3 and 30 megahertz (MHz). It is also known as the decameter band or decameter wave as its wavelengths range from one to ten ...
transmitter station forming part of the
Defence High Frequency Communications Service The Defence High Frequency Communications Service or the DHFCS is a British military beyond line-of-sight communication system operated by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and used predominately by the UK Armed Forces, as well as other authorised ...
. The station is operated by
Babcock International Group Babcock International Group plc is a British aerospace, defence and nuclear engineering services company based in London, England. It specialises in managing complex assets and infrastructure. Although the company has civil contracts, its main b ...
on behalf of the
Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...
.


See also

*
List of air stations of the Royal Navy This is a list of naval air stations of the Royal Navy. Naval air stations are land bases of the Fleet Air Arm, the branch of the Royal Navy responsible for the operation of naval aircraft. Current naval air stations Currently RNAS means "R ...
*
24 February Events Pre-1600 * 484 – King Huneric of the Vandals replaces Nicene bishops with Arian ones, and banishes some to Corsica. *1303 – The English are defeated at the Battle of Roslin, in the First War of Scottish Independence. * 1386 ...
– Royal Navy submarine is lost with all 37 crew on sea trials in the
Sound of Bute In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by the ...
; she would not be located until 1994. *
27 March Events Pre-1600 *1309 – Pope Clement V imposes excommunication and interdiction on Venice, and a general prohibition of all commercial intercourse with Venice, which had seized on Ferrara, a papal fiefdom. * 1329 – Pope John XXII ...
–
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
escort carrier The escort carrier or escort aircraft carrier (U.S. hull classification symbol CVE), also called a "jeep carrier" or "baby flattop" in the United States Navy (USN) or "Woolworth Carrier" by the Royal Navy, was a small and slow type of aircraft ...
is destroyed by an accidental explosion in the
Firth of Clyde The Firth of Clyde is the mouth of the River Clyde. It is located on the west coast of Scotland and constitutes the deepest coastal waters in the British Isles (it is 164 metres deep at its deepest). The firth is sheltered from the Atlantic ...
, killing 379 of the crew of 528. *
30 May Events Pre-1600 * 70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall. The Romans build a circumvallation, cutting down all trees within fifteen kilometres ...
– Royal Navy submarine is lost with all hands on a training exercise in the Firth of Clyde. * 30 November – is launched at
John Brown & Company John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish Naval architecture, marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and the ''Queen Elizabeth 2 (ship), Queen Elizabeth 2''. At its ...
's shipyard at
Clydebank Clydebank ( gd, Bruach Chluaidh) is a town in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde, it borders the village of Old Kilpatrick (with Bowling, West Dunbartonshire, Bowling and Milton, West Dunbartonshire, Mil ...
by the Princess Elizabeth. The
Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...
's largest, fastest and last
battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
, she was laid down in October 1941 and will be in commission from 1946-60.


References


Citations


Bibliography

*


External links


WWII base information
{{Defunct airports in the United Kingdom Royal Navy bases in Scotland Transport in Aberdeenshire Royal Naval Air Stations in Scotland