Elvington Airfield could soon be flying into a new future. The owners have applied for an aerodrome licence, allowing it to take fare-paying passengers for the first time. It is the latest chapter in the history of an airfield which once played a key part in the war as a Bomber Command airbase.

Elvington's role in the hostilities is remembered in a definitive new book. Bases Of Bomber Command Then And Now, by Roger A Freeman, charts the history of 101 airfields used by Bomber Command squadrons during the Second World War.

The lavishly-illustrated, 360-page book is packed with detail about when the bases were constructed and which squadrons occupied them. Mr Freeman also includes excerpts of personal testimony from the air crews and eyewitness reports of their exploits.

Similarly, layouts and aerial photographs of the airfields take their place alongside more human pictures, showing exhausted aircrew returning from sorties. To bring the story up to date, new photographs of the airfields - or what has replaced them - are included.

The airfields in the book are organised according to their group, with No 4 Group, headquarters Heslington Hall, and No 6 Group, HQ at Allerton Park House, being of most interest to local people.

Elvington itself, five miles south-east of York, was originally scheduled as a satellite landing ground, Mr Freeman writes. It was first occupied in 1942 by No 77 Squadron flying Whitleys. They later switched to Halifaxes.

No 77 later moved to Full Sutton, with two more squadrons moving into Elvington in spring 1944. Disaster struck that December, when a loaded Halifax caught fire and exploded, killing 13 people.

Pocklington is another airfield in the news. East Yorkshire businessman Reg Bond wants to turn it into a floodlit, all-weather horse-racing track. It, too, has a distinguished war record. Like Elvington, it was part of No 4 Group.

Pocklington was occupied originally by No 405 Squadron, the first Canadian squadron in Bomber Command. They carried out 84 raids in 11 months, from which 20 of the squadron's Wellingtons never returned.

Holme-on-Spalding Moor airbase also reflected the multinational nature of the forces ranged against Hitler. The first offensive operations from Holme took place on the night of October 20, 1941, with ten Wellingtons attacking Antwerp. One aircraft was lost, Sgt Philip Crittenden being the first Australian in Bomber Command to be killed from an RAAF Squadron.

Little evidence of this airfield remains. Crops grow where once Wellingtons and Halifaxes flew. This is true of a number of the bases in the book: at East Moor, near Sutton-on-the-Forest, all traces of the wartime airbase have disappeared under a potato crop. Dalton, near Thirsk, has become an industrial estate.

Others, of course, are still operating as airfields. Rufforth was used for training RAF crews in the war; in the Seventies its surviving control tower featured in the Seventies TV series Airline. Now it is home to York Gliding Centre.

Originally, RAF airbases were grassed areas. But the soggy British weather soon made it imperative for hard runways to be constructed. Linton-on-Ouse, in No 6 Group, was the first Bomber Command airfield in northern England to boast concrete runways, which were built in 1939.

Pilot Officer Leonard Cheshire, "the most distinguished of all Bomber Command's airmen", served at Linton, and Mr Freeman includes some of Mr Cheshire's testimony in the book.

When he had to transfer from the "homely" Whitleys to the "vastly more complicated" Halifaxes he threw himself into hibernation, to learn.

"Throughout the hours of this long hibernation, there was time in abundance to meditate, and nothing but memories to live on," Mr Cheshire writes. "The memories were sweet and often exhilarating.

"The carefree, cheerful life: the trust and companionship in danger: the splendour of success: the frustration of failure. These were the qualities that made the memories sweet, but behind all this there was an inescapable note of sadness.

"When Napoleon considered the appointment of a new general, he invariably asked: 'Is he lucky?' Time and again I have wondered at that, but now I know that Napoleon was right."

Something of the flavour of the nightly courage shown by every airman in Bomber Command is captured in an account entitled Portrait Of A Bomber Pilot by Christopher Jary. This picks up on Leonard Cheshire's theme of good luck.

Mr Jary writes that the crew would only know of their new target at the nightly briefing. "No 76 Squadron, based at Linton-on-Ouse, had bombed each of these targets in the past month: Nuremberg on the 8th, Munich on the 9th, Stuttgart on the 11th and twice to Berlin.

"They had been lucky. In 12 operations in March they had lost only five aircraft but two of these, including one captained by one of their flight commanders, had been lost on the first trip to Berlin.

"The German capital, with its long haul across Germany and its active flak and many night-fighters, was the worst target of all. Many aircrew must have prayed hard that it would not be the 'Big City' again tonight."

It was. But the raid was hindered by the freezing weather. "The 247 crews who pressed on found that the weather cleared only as they reached the western coast of Schleswig-Holstein.

"Until then, they flew on instruments, struggling to keep control of their ice-covered aircraft, aware of the presence of other aeroplanes only when they felt the buffeting caused by hitting the slipstream of another bomber.

"Over the German coast the weather cleared but it had delayed them and they were late bombing their target.

"The patchy and scattered bombing showed that few aircraft had got through and this depletion of the bomber stream, together with the clear weather over Germany, made them more vulnerable to the German flak and night fighters."

The raid was not a success.

"The Pathfinders had dropped their Target Indicators too far south and many bombs fell in open country six miles south of Berlin. Twenty-one aircraft were lost, and a further 12 from another raid that night on Bochum.

"Back at Linton, by dawn it was clear that, of the five No 76 Squadron aircraft which had pressed on, two were missing. There would be no survivors."

Bases Of Bomber Command Then And Now by Roger A Freeman is published by After The Battle, price £44.95

Updated: 10:53 Monday, February 11, 2002