Beginnings
The station was founded in World War II on the site of a former golf course. It was home to various Coastal Command squadrons patrolling the North Atlantic for U-Boats. In late 1940, a detachment of Avro Anson aircraft arrived from No. 612 (County of Aberdeen) Squadron, Royal Auxiliary Air Force. The Ansons operated from the site of RAF Stornoway while it was still under construction. By November 1940, the aircraft from 612 Squadron had been posted to RAF Wick and were gradually replaced by Ansons from 48 Squadron RAF, based at RAF Hooton Park.
In March 1940, No. 827 Squadron RNAS operated Fairey Albacore aircraft from Stornoway in conjunction with the Ansons of 48 Squadron on maritime patrols across the Atlantic. This continued until the station was completed at which point they moved away. RAF Stornoway was officially constituted on 1 April 1941 as part of 15 Group, RAF Coastal Command.
Read more about this topic: RAF Stornoway
Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“Let us, then, take our compass; we are something, and we are not everything. The nature of our existence hides from us the knowledge of first beginnings which are born of the nothing; and the littleness of our being conceals from us the sight of the infinite. Our intellect holds the same position in the world of thought as our body occupies in the expanse of nature.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)