37-Squadron Night Landing Grounds
Pilots from the Goldhanger Flight Station were known to occasionally used a “Night Landing Ground” near the village of Easthorpe and close to the London Road (now the A12) between Kelvedon and Marks Tey. Little is known about the site, other than it comprised of a grass strip, tents, a fuel storage tank and a wind sock. The Royal Flying Corps 37-Squadron acquired twelve of these landing sites in the vicinity, managed from their headquarters at The Grange on the Southend Rd. in Woodham Mortimer. The Easthorpe site was the nearest one to the Goldhanger Flight Station and we have the incident records of two Flying Officers based at Goldhanger who used the Easthorpe landing ground...
2nd Lt Armstrong took off from Goldhanger at 23:00 on 17th February 1918 in response to a raid by a single Giant Bomber that was destined to bomb London. For 2 hours, he patrolled from Goldhanger to Easthorpe. Then Armstrong’s BE-12 aircraft crashed in a field in Tolleshunt Major. The aircraft burst into flames killing 2nd Lt Armstrong. 2nd Lt Armstrong is buried in a military grave Goldhanger churchyard, his name is on the Goldhanger War Memorial and is also on the Stow Maries memorial.
	The second incident is recorded in the... Goldhanger Flight Station Operational Records “37-Squadron attempted to intercept Zeppelin L42 but were frustrated by the weather, two aircraft from Goldhanger and one from Rochford, airborne after early reports of Zeppelins off the Suffolk coast were forced back by the conditions. Captain William Sowery broke his propeller and the lower wing while landing in poor visibility. His second sortie in another aircraft was cut short when a sooted spark plugs forced him down at Easthorpe. The Operational Records of 32 Goldhanger incidents can be seen... here
This map identifies the locations of 37-Squadron’s Landing Grounds in relation to the Squadron’s Flight Stations...
Flight Stations and Landing Grounds were categorised the RFC according to their day and night time capabilities: First Class Landing Ground – Several buildings, hangars and accommodation Second Class Landing Ground – a permanent hangar, and a few huts Third Class Landing Ground – a temporary “Bessonneau” hangar Emergency Landing Ground – often a field, requested by telephone call to the farmer, requesting he moved away grazing animals Night Landing Grounds - lit with perimeter lights and/or have a “flarepath”, these were provided to support attacks on night time Zeppelin raids. for more information about this see... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Flying_Corps
One can only wonder why the Easthorpe was chosen as a suitable site... Several factors would have been taken into account: o The distance from existing flight stations to provide the best opportunity to land in an emergency or when low on fuel. By today’s standards very small amounts of fuel were used as the bi-planes had to keep weight down to reach the cruising height of the Zeppelins, so there was a high risk of running out of fuel. o Flat land with established grass and easy access by road or a hard gravel surface was essential, there would have been no time to develop a site. o The absence of houses and large trees in the immediate vicinity, but with telephone wires nearby. ...and how did the site operate if there were no buildings or permanent occupation? One can assume that at the same time that a flight took off from the Flight Station a ground crew would set off for the night landing ground, probably on motorcycles, and on arrival would send up flairs and position their headlights to point along the grass indicating the location and direction of the landing strip. There would have had a tank of fuel available and the crew would assisted the pilot to refuel using small cans to convey the fuel to the aircraft, and then carry out any minor repairs.
Immediately after the war the Easthorpe field would have been handed back to the farmer, and as no buildings were put up there, nothing remained. Here is a 1925 map showing just a field and a recent satellite view of the same location...
Between the 1950s and 2015 the field became the Marks Tey Point-to-Point track, and since then it has been the site of the Colchester Model Aircraft and Model Car Clubs. A memorial has been placed nearby...
We can however, visualise what the Easthorpe landing ground would have looked like in its heyday as we have an artist’s impression of what the Rochford site was like in 1915 when it too was designated as a landing ground with no buildings on the site... Within a few months Rochford was upgraded to a Flight Station and in 1917 RFC became a Night Flying Training Station as part of 61-Sqdn. Ever since then the airfield has had an remarkable evolution: 1939 RAF Fighter Command 1945 Southend municipal airport 2008 London-Southend International Airport
These websites may be useful for further investigation... http://www.ukairfields.org.uk/airfields--memorials.html http://www.ukairfields.org.uk/easthorpe.html https://www.abct.org.uk/airfield-finder/ http://www.ukairfieldguide.net/search.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Flying_Corps_airfields
the definitive printed book on this subject is... Fields of the First by Paul Doyle published in 1997 a history of the WW1 landing fields in Essex
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Goldhanger Flight Station Zeppelin Busters over the Blackwater home