RNAS ''Longside'' is a former

Royal Naval Air Service The Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps t ...

airship station located south of

Longside Longside is a village located in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, consisting of a single main street. It lies seven miles inland from Peterhead and two miles from Mintlaw on the A950. Its population in 2001 was 721. The River Ugie flows through it. I ...

Aberdeenshire Aberdeenshire ( sco, Aiberdeenshire; gd, Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the County of Aberdeen which has substantially different boundaries. The Aberdeenshire Council area inclu ...

and north of Hatton, Aberdeenshire,

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to ...

. It was constructed in 1915 and was operational from 1916 until 1920 when the extensive buildings were demolished. It is sometimes referred to as RNAS Lenabo particularly by locals who termed the airships 'Lenobo Soo' a reference to the name of the area combined with the local dialect for a pig. It was the most northerly air ship station in mainland

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

. The air ships also used a small mooring site near Montrose in bad weather. The remit was to patrol the shipping lanes in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...

and the north east coast. Since the airship station was decommissioned, it has been used as a forestry plantation and there is little indication of its former use.

History

The land at Lenabo was a large piece of

bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; a ...

land and when it was decided to commission it to be used as the most northerly British air base station before any building could start, the land had to be cleared. The meaning of Lenabo is taken from the Gaelic 'Lannam bo' that means 'wet meadow of the cows' and was an apt description of the land. The excavations were carried out by thousands of Irish and Scottish labourers drafted into the area. A large amount of peat was removed from the 950 acre site using basic equipment such as steam scoops and bucket cranes. May & Hay (2000): p. 334 Hughes (2003): p. 3 The buildings on the site were extensive and included three airship sheds that were high and could be seen on the horizon for miles as the land was flat. There were also two high chimneys as well as stores, workshops and administration areas together with barracks. Unlike most sites constructed for use during the war, which were of an easily removed nature, the buildings at the base were built to last and were heavy concrete and brickwork. The main entrance had two concrete pillars adorned with elaborate globes mounted at the top. Four airships could be accommodated in the biggest shed while one or two could be housed in the smaller hangars. There were 1,500 personnel based at the station and the facilities included a swimming pool, shops, a theatre and a church. There was also a gas works within the site. The arrival by rail of two deflated airships in 1916 signified the base becoming operational. There was an extensive community stationed at the base and it is referred to in the book "Longside: a parish and its people" as a township. A magazine titled "The Battlebag" was regularly produced and distributed at the base. May & Hay (2000): p. 335 RNAS Lenabo or Longside

There was a railway line operated by the Great North of Scotland Railway, which ran from Longside to the base. The spur was solely used to service the air station and was operational from late 1916; 31,913 tons of coal were brought in on the railway branch line.Sir Malcolm Barclay-Harvey, ''A History of the Great Northern of Scotland Railway'', 1949, page 217 A local landowner was paid £2,500 to compensate for the use of the part of his land the railway line ran through although the land was returned to him when the base was closed. In 1920 the first fatal car accident in

Buchan Buchan is an area of north-east Scotland, historically one of the original provinces of the Kingdom of Alba. It is now one of the six committee areas and administrative areas of Aberdeenshire Council, Scotland. These areas were created by ...

occurred when a train on the rail line to the base hit a car. Hughes (2003): p. 4 The three large airship hangars at the base had massive doors ranging from high with a width of through to by and these doors were on rollers to ease opening and closing them. According to Hughes, the common Royal Air Force term '

Two six heave "Two, six, heave" is a phrase used to coordinate seamen's pulling. As used by sailors, the person at the front of the team will typically call out the "two, six" part of the chant. During this phase all members move their hands up the line ready t ...

' was first coined by personnel trying to open the doors. Hughes (2003): p. 5

Operations

The commander was

Lieutenant Commander Lieutenant commander (also hyphenated lieutenant-commander and abbreviated Lt Cdr, LtCdr. or LCDR) is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander. The corresponding ran ...

Robinson and his second in command was Squadron Commander Moyes. Hughes (2003): p. 8 The site was used by the

NS class blimp The British NS (North Sea) class non-rigid airships were the largest and last in a succession of "blimps" that served with the Royal Naval Air Service during World War I; developed from experiences gained with earlier classes to operate off th ...

s N.S.3, 4, 6, 11 and 12.Sea Three''
Turpin, Brian J. Retrieved on 30 March 2009. In June 1918 an airship was damaged over the

Firth of Forth The Firth of Forth () is the estuary, or firth, of several Scottish rivers including the River Forth. It meets the North Sea with Fife on the north coast and Lothian on the south. Name ''Firth'' is a cognate of ''fjord'', a Norse word meani ...

and five crew members were lost. The following month another airship and crew was lost in the North Sea. A wooden propeller was eventually found and is kept in St John's Church, Longside as a memorial to the lost crew. There were strong gales at the end of September 1918 causing difficulties landing the airships returning to the base. The extreme conditions resulted in four of the airships having to be 'ripped' once they had been maneuvered into the shelter of the hangars. Ripped is the term used when the rip cord attached to the control car is deliberately pulled to deflate panels sited on the airships. Hughes (2003): p. 25 The airships ripped included a C10A and a SSZ65. During the coal strike of 1919, airmen from the base used their trucks to carry mail. As the war drew to a close, there were 12 airships at the base. Locals called the airships "Lenobo Soo". 'Soo' is the local derivative for a sow or pig. The base was very quickly closed by the

Air Ministry The Air Ministry was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom with the responsibility of managing the affairs of the Royal Air Force, that existed from 1918 to 1964. It was under the political authority of the Secretary of Stat ...

in 1920 and it was purchased by demolition companies for a nominal amount. The majority of the buildings were eventually demolished. May & Hay (2000): p. 336 Hughes (2003): p. 15

Ancillary site

A smaller site at Auldbar, near Montrose was utilised to moor the airships if they were unable to return to the main base station in bad weather. Situated south of Lenabo, it was the only mooring station in Scotland. Four bases for the airships were cleared in the forested area and used as 'nests'. The trees gave protection from the wind so, in comparison to the main base, only a skeleton staff was required. Little remains of the sub-station site except some traces of the mooring pit. Hughes (2003): pp. 17–18

Current use

After the site was closed in 1920, the site was forested during the 1920s and when the trees were felled in the 1960s and 1970s it was discovered that some of the buildings still remained. The chimneys and entrance pillars were demolished in 1966 as the structures were thought to be unsafe. As of early 2013, the site is currently woodland. It is difficult to find the original layout of the airfield from remains but there are still some concrete floors, mooring blocks and other massive bits of concrete within the trees. In 2003, Longside Community Council had a memorial plaque mounted on to a structure that is thought to have been part of the officer's mess. The structure is just beside the small parking area at the entrance to the forest. The plaque incorporates a photo of the base, which is held at the

RAF Museum The Royal Air Force Museum is a museum dedicated to the Royal Air Force in the United Kingdom. The museum is a non-departmental public body of the Ministry of Defence and is a registered charity. The museum is split into two separate sites: * Ro ...

Footnotes

Bibliography