ex RAF Carnaby (2022) Industrial Estate HD

Also known as: Carnaby Industrial Estate / Carnaby Raceway / RAF Bridlington / RAF Carnaby County: East Riding of Yorkshire Current Status: Industry Date: 26 March 1944 - 1969; subsequent minor use Current Use: Disused Used By: RAF (main user) / Civil (minor use) Landing Surface Types: Paved Aircraft Roles: General aviation (minor use) / Missile (main role) / None (Emergency Landing Ground) / Trainer Carnaby was one of three special airfields created during World War Two as an Emergency Landing Ground for aircraft, especially heavy bombers. They quickly landed if they were either damaged through enemy action, suffered technical malfunctions or had to divert for weather reasons. Key to this idea was a huge runway in terms of both length and breadth. At 9,000 feet (not including grass extensions at either end) it was half as long again as a standard bomber runway, while the width of 750 feet was five times the norm. Apart from the runway, there were few other facilities available but this did not detract from the airfield’s significance; the runway was also equipped with the FIDO fog-clearing device. Over the next year and a half, after first opening in March 1944, Carnaby enabled more than 1,500 aircraft to land safely, thereby saving thousands of lives in the process. The airfield was soon quickly run down but this was far from the end of its life. For a while, immediately after the war, the place, then known officially in RAF circles as Bridlington, became a Relief Landing Ground for various training units. No 203 Advanced Flying School went a stage further by being temporarily based there in the summer of 1950 owing to runway resurfacing at Driffield. Later on in 1959 the airfield switched roles again to become one of Britain’s Thor intermediate range ballistic missile bases and served as home to No 150 Squadron. Somewhat unusually, these nuclear devices were joined the following year by defensive Bloodhound surface-to-air missiles of No 247 Squadron but the decreasing immediate global threat resulted in both of these units disbanding by the end of 1963. By 1969 Carnaby had closed altogether, yet this was still not the end for this remarkable place as two local authorities purchased the site in 1972 for it to become an industrial estate. Motor sport lasted for a number of years too but the former activity gradually predominated to the extent that company premises cover most of the runway today; a distinctive dispersal loop on the south-west side has since disappeared. Even so, when driving along what is now Lancaster Road, it is still relatively easy to imagine the sheer scale of this place in its flying days.