Royal Air Force Use
Towards the end of World War I, on 1 April 1918, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps amalgamated. The station at Eastchurch was transferred to the newly formed Royal Air Force and was re-designated Royal Air Force Station Eastchurch, or RAF Eastchurch for short. During the last few months of the War, No. 204 Training Depot Station, the 64th (Naval) Wing and the 58th (Training) Wing were based at Eastchurch.
RAF Eastchurch remained active during the inter-war years and it was home to No. 266 Squadron during the Battle of Britain. During World War II, Eastchurch was part of Coastal Command. A siding was laid to connect RAF Eastchurch with Eastchurch railway station on the Sheppey Light Railway. RAF Eastchurch closed in 1946.
The site is currently used as HM Prison Standford Hill. While there are a number of new buildings some of the original buildings survive including a number of pillboxes. The main roads in the prison reflect the aviation links; Rolls Avenue and Airfield View, Short's Prospect and Wright's Way. In the entrance to HMP Swaleside are two brass plaques; one records that the prison is built on what was the airstrip of RAF Eastchurch and the other lists the owners of the airstrip from 1909 to the end of the RAF use.
Read more about this topic: RAF Eastchurch
Famous quotes containing the words royal, air and/or force:
“Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.”
—O. Henry [William Sydney Porter] (1862–1910)
“They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These are stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, amid the rustle of leaves like migrating finches; this is the true harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the crowd.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.”
—Advertisement. Poster in a school near Irving Place, New York City (1983)