The early years

Dunsfold Aerodrome was built in 1942 by the Royal Canadian Army as an emergency airfield. Between 1942 and 1945 a variety of aircraft operated from Dunsfold including Spitfires, Mosquitoes, B-25 Mitchell Bombers, Typhoons and Mustangs.

After the War

After the war, the airfield was used as a repatriation centre and over 47,000 prisoners of war were returned to their homelands using Dakota, Lancaster, and Stirling and Halifax aircraft. However, the usefulness of the airfield came to an end in August 1946 when Dunsfold was declared inactive. In 1950, the Hawker Aircraft Company Ltd (today part of BAE SYSTEMS) acquired the site.

The BAE Years

A number of the wartime buildings remain on the airfield - the three main production hangars, for example were built in the early 1950s with the remainder following over a period of years.

There have been a number of milestones recorded at the site such as when in May 1953 test pilot Neville Duke broke the ‘world speed record’ sound barrier at an average of 727.63 mile per hour (mach 0.92 at sea level) in a prototype Hunter Mk3.

In October 1960 the forerunner of the Harrier Jump jet made its first tethered flight there, which led to its maiden conventional flight in November of the same year.

Today...

Dunsfold Park Ltd has recently unveiled its masterplan for the site and it is against the threat to build a New Town of 2,600 homes that this campaign has been launched. The masterplan link leads to a page on the Dunsfold Park website on which you can open a pdf version of the brochure of the scheme. If you do not already have it on your PC you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the brochure.

Want to know more?

There is a great book covering the complete history of the airfield by Paul McCue - you can get it from Amazon here: Dunsfold: Surrey's Most Secret Airfield