Royal Air Force Zeals or more simply RAF Zeals is a former

Royal Air Force station The Royal Air Force (RAF) operates several stations throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. This includes front-line and training air bases, support, administrative and training stations with no flying activity, unmanned airfields used fo ...

in Wiltshire, sited to the north of the village of

Zeals Zeals is a village and civil parish in southwest Wiltshire, England. The village is about west of Mere, next to the A303 road towards Wincanton, and adjoins the villages of Bourton, Dorset and Penselwood, Somerset. Its name comes from the Old E ...

, next to the village of Stourton and the Stourhead estate.

History

The station was in operation from 1942 to 1946, and was successively occupied by the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

, the

United States Army Air Force The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

and 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 ...

. From opening until August 1943 the site was used by the RAF as an airfield for

Hawker Hurricane The Hawker Hurricane is a British single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1930s–40s which was designed and predominantly built by Hawker Aircraft Ltd. for service with the Royal Air Force (RAF). It was overshadowed in the public consciousness by ...

and

Supermarine Spitfire The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Grif ...

fighters. In August 1943 it was transferred to the United States Army Air Force with the intention of using the airfield for maintenance of

Douglas C-47 Skytrain The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota (RAF, RAAF, RCAF, RNZAF, and SAAF designation) is a military transport aircraft developed from the civilian Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II and remained in ...

transport aircraft. However, the damp conditions prevented the operation of heavy aircraft, so

Republic P-47 Thunderbolt The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt is a World War II-era fighter aircraft produced by the American company Republic Aviation from 1941 through 1945. It was a successful high-altitude fighter and it also served as the foremost American fighter-bombe ...

fighters were flown from Zeals instead. From March 1944, it returned to the RAF who used it as a fighter airfield for

de Havilland Mosquito The de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito is a British twin-engined, shoulder-winged, multirole combat aircraft, introduced during the Second World War. Unusual in that its frame was constructed mostly of wood, it was nicknamed the "Wooden Wonder", or ...

fighters against German bombers. Following

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

, the RAF used the airfield for

military glider Military gliders (an offshoot of common gliders) have been used by the militaries of various countries for carrying troops (glider infantry) and heavy equipment to a combat zone, mainly during the Second World War. These engineless aircraft were ...

training in preparation for action against Japan. In April 1945 the station was taken over by the Royal Navy (as HMS ''Hummingbird'' or RNAS Zeals) who used the airfield for

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

training. The airfield was closed down from January 1946 and in June it was returned to farmland. The control tower, now a private house, remains on Bells Lane in Zeals.

Dakota crash – 19 February 1945

A Douglas Dakota III crashed on 19 February 1945, killing more than twenty people. The aircraft had taken off from Zeals airfield to return to

Lincolnshire Lincolnshire (abbreviated Lincs.) is a county in the East Midlands of England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south-east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south-west, Leicestershire ...

after two weeks of glider training and flew into some cloud-covered beech trees on a knoll. The site of the crash is marked by a memorial which was erected by the Wiltshire Historical Military Society.

Units

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References

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