RAF Tarrant Rushton
Jim Humberstone examines the pivotal role Tarrant Rushton played in three World War 2 engagements and beyond
Published in December ’18
Towing aircraft and gliders assembled at RAF Tarrant Rushton in preparation for D-Day, 1944. Credit: Andrew Wright Collection
Most extensive of all the Dorset villages which owe a part of their name to the river on which they are located are those in the valley of the River Tarrant. No fewer than eight settlements cluster along its banks as it meanders slowly south towards its junction with the River Stour, north of Wimborne. While all can claim historic pedigrees from medieval times or even earlier, one in particular, Tarrant Rushton, gained special significance among its neighbours towards the middle of the 20th century. Chosen during World War 2 as the location of a large military airfield, this part of Dorset went on to play an important part in the allied war effort.
Work on the airfield began in the spring of 1942 with Wimpey as the main contractor. Construction took just over a year and when finished, the new RAF station was furnished with three runways to a standard service pattern, all connected by a continuous perimeter track. The longest of the runways, aligned approximately north-south, was 2000 yards, that is over a mile, in length. This was just as well because in the event it would be required to fly off and land the largest four-engined military aircraft.
Initially, during the last months of 1943, the newly arrived resident squadrons of four-engined Halifax bombers were employed on ‘hush-hush’ operations involving the supply of arms and assistance to the Resistance movement and its SOE supporters in enemy-occupied France.
Credit: Humberstone
By early 1944, after their experience of the night movements from the airfield, local folk became aware that another, rather special, activity was going on ‘up the hill’, this time in daylight. Large aircraft appeared to be whooshing in over their heads to land at the airfield without any engine noise. It soon became clear what was afoot as the station began to acquire its complements of personnel and machines, including significant groups of men in khaki. Tarrant Rushton had in fact become a base for the British Airborne Forces and the silent aerial arrivals were the vanguard of fleets of military gliders assembling in large numbers, eventually to be parked across the airfield.
RAF Tarrant Rushton Glider Pilot Regiment members 1944. Credit: Andrew Wright Collection
Although experience of airborne assault had been gained by the British in North Africa in late 1942 and in Sicily during 1943, Tarrant Rushton squadrons with their military component would eventually participate in actions during 1944 and 1945 which would dramatically eclipse the scale of these early operations.
The first of these involved the British 6th Airborne Division. This has gone down in history with the now familiar name of Operation Overlord, the allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944. Flying from their bases in central and southern England, the airborne forces were tasked with silencing strong points such as shore batteries likely to resist and impede the landings, together with actions to secure the flanks of an established allied bridgehead against any German counter-attack.
The glider-borne troops from Tarrant Rushton had a pivotal role to play in the proceedings. Taking off in the dark from the airfield, formations of converted four-engined Halifax bombers, together with twin-engined glider tugs, towed a combination of Horsa and Hamilcar gliders across the Channel to land in Normandy. The Horsa could accommodate a little over two dozen infantrymen but the Hamilcar was as big as a Lancaster bomber and could provide vital support in the form of light artillery, Bren-carriers and anti-tank weapons.
Minutes after midnight on 6 June, a small unit of the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, carried in gliders towed from Tarrant Rushton, were perhaps the first allied troops to set foot in Normandy as they landed virtually on top of their objective. Within minutes they had captured two vital bridges over the River Orne and the Caen Canal to be held by them until reinforced by commando and other units joining up with them overland. This was a classic coup de main action. It has been immortalised through the re-naming of one of the bridges Pegasus, after the symbol the airborne forces carried on their shoulder flash: the winged horse and rider from Greek mythology.
The perimeter road around Tarrant Rushton airfield. Credit: Jim Humberstone
Sadly, the next action in which Tarrant Rushton units participated lacked the signal success of the D-Day operations. This was at Arnhem on the north bank of the Rhine in Holland, in the days following 17 September 1944. Well-documented and publicised in such epics as A Bridge Too Far, Operation Market Garden, as the September landings were called, was one part of Field Marshal Montgomery’s highly ambitious move to undertake an encircling movement around German forces by seizing bridges across the Dutch section of the Rhine. The undertaking was beset by problems. Amongst other difficulties, poor intelligence about the presence of enemy units in strength, totally inadequate wireless communications after the landing and weather clamp-down hampered the whole operation.
Tarrant Rushton’s part in the proceedings was crucial. On the first day 41 glider combinations flew to the Dutch town. Over a three-day period more than ninety sorties were made from the airfield with surprisingly, no losses to the Halifax glider tug squadrons. Other army and RAF units suffered great losses and the action has gone down in history as a tragic but heroic military failure.
One of the two remaining hangars. Credit: Jim Humberstone
The last airborne assault, code-named Operation Varsity, provided the aerial component of a massed allied crossing of the Rhine near the small German town of Wesel on 24 March 1945. It was the largest airborne operation in history and involved two airborne divisions, one British, one American, with over twenty thousand airborne troops taking part. Two squadrons from Tarrant Rushton participated but in this instance, due to the location of the action being much further east than the previous operations, their aircraft and gliders were detached to RAF Woodbridge near the Suffolk coast.
Hostilities in Europe ceased in Europe on 8 May 1945. Tarrant Rushton’s squadrons’ last contribution was to fly troops to Norway to implement the disarmament of the German forces occupying that country.
Of the many hundreds of wartime airfields in commission on VE Day, the majority reverted very quickly to their previous state, principally as farmland. Tarrant Rushton proved to be an exception. Although it remained as a vacant Air Ministry airfield for a short period after the war’s end, flying activity returned to Tarrant Rushton in 1948. Its new occupants were Flight Refuelling Ltd, Sir Alan Cobham’s pioneering company, developing the technique after which the firm was named. The airfield came to life again. As well as taking part in the development of the systems and their handling techniques, the company’s tanker aircraft, with their capability of carrying many thousands of gallons of fuel, rendered valuable service by flying this precious cargo into Berlin as part of the Berlin Airlift.
A Halifax bomber tows a Hamilcar glider over the airfield at Tarrant Rushton. Credit: Andrew Wright Collection
Flight Refuelling’s tankers were converted World War 2 piston-engined bombers but later in the 1950s, the environs of the airfield would resound to the roar of Rolls Royce Avon jet engines as Cobham’s company developed and adapted their equipment for use in V-bombers. Vickers Valiant and Canberra aircraft were detached by the RAF to Tarrant Rushton to spend many months testing such elements as the drogue systems before the equipment was taken into service.
The peacetime resurgence of an RAF presence during Flight Refuelling’s tenure of the post-war years extended the airfield’s life, unlike many other wartime stations up and down the country. The airfield assisted the RAF, helping at one point in the establishment and running of a fighter school equipped with Meteor aircraft. Tarrant Rushton even took on the role of a standby base for the Vulcan and Victor V-bomber squadrons.
Flying finally ended in 1980. Concrete runways and dispersal bays were broken up and although the perimeter track remained, the demolition of the control tower in 1981 spelled the death knell of Tarrant Rushton as an airfield. Little remained after that as evidence of the very active wartime flying years of the 1940s.
Nevertheless, there is a quite distinctive and oddly romantic atmosphere about deserted airfield sites such as RAF Tarrant Rushton. Stand quite still on the perimeter track on a bright summer day, shut your eyes and listen. With a little imagination, it may still be possible to hear noises carried by the wind: the creak of opening hangar doors and the rhythmic stamp of marching feet, quickly drowned by the crackle, pop and roar in the distance as a Halifax fires up its four powerful engines.
