Janet Hewison looks back over the Royal Air Force's illustrious history in this area.

The RAF said the flight formation of Tornado F3 aircraft that took to North Yorkshire skies today was a tribute to the community for their support over the decades of its history.

But airfields historian Guy Jefferson, from York, said the county had a lot to thank the RAF for since it was set up on April 1, 1918.He said North and East Yorkshire's first links with the RAF were during the First World War, when many open spaces were used as emergency landing grounds.

But it was in the years 1936 to 1939, as the Nazis rose to power in Germany, that the biggest expansion came, bringing employment for civilians and money into the economy.

In 1936 building started on RAF Leconfield, Driffield, Dishforth and Linton-on-Ouse, and in 1938 at RAF Leeming, Topcliffe and Church Fenton.

And as war broke out in 1939, RAF Linton-on-Ouse, where Guy worked as a teenager, and then for 35 years as a civilian radio engineer, became the headquarters for the area.

There were many hard times and Guy said he remembered one bombing when a group captain who had been at Linton for only one day, died after standing on an anti-personnel mine as he tried to rescue people from the rubble of homes in nearby Newton-on-Ouse, where Guy grew up.

But for Guy, the war years were a period he will never forget.

"It was the happiest and most exciting time of my life - everyone was pulling together," he said.

And when the Canadians - many of them French-speaking - arrived in late 1942, together with Australian personnel, Linton-on-Ouse became an international village.

"The Canadians had plenty of sweets and cigarettes to give away to us teenagers and they were great fun at the local - they taught us how to do the jitterbug," said Guy.

When the war ended, the RAF closed many of its bases again. There was an expansion before the Korean War in 1952, but as nuclear weapons were developed during the Cold War, the force began to shrink.

"There are now about 16 airfields in the whole country, whereas there were 700 in wartime," said Guy.

"But in Yorkshire, because of the relatively free air space, we have been lucky."

In the 1960s RAF Linton-on-Ouse became the main station for basic pilot and navigation training, which it remains to this day, and it was at Linton that the Duke of York, then Prince Andrew, did his basic flying training.

And in the 1980s, RAF Leeming was developed into a front-line air defence base, housing fighter planes.

But the RAF has also left its mark in other ways.

"There are hundreds of airmen from Linton who have married locally and now wouldn't live anywhere else," said Guy.

And he admitted that his own 45-year-old marriage had its origins at RAF Linton-on-Ouse.

He first spoke to his wife, June, the station's switchboard supervisor, while he was testing an old telephone cable by talking to her from a radio station out on the airfield.

The history of Yorkshire's airfields and hundreds of others across the country is contained in a display at the Yorkshire Air Museum at Elvington created by Guy, who is now 70, and works as a volunteer at the museum.

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The Yorkshire Air Museum website

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