Re: 21 aircraft depot - RAF
Firstly please excuse my poor english.
I am writing about the story of Nantes airfleds between 1907 and 1940. I have a few informations about the N°21 AD at Nantes Château-BOUGON but severla archives were destroyed before the departure from Nantes.
The beginning of this Air Depot is 23 september 1940 and the ROYAL AIR FORCE took place in the infrastructures used before by GAO 511 (Bessonneau hangars and the new mettalic hangar in the sud west of the airfield.
Many infrastructure were built by the RAF airmen between october and mars : several Bellman hangars, camp of Nissen huts. They finished also the concrete runway(13-31) and the control tower begun to build by French.
Many Fairey Battle came to Nantes to refuelling before going to war front (Squadron N°88, Squadron N°12, N°1 ATS, 218 squadron, N°105 Squadron, N°105 squadron). Other aircrafts maked the same thing before rejoining South as Bleinheim Wellesley, Gladiator, Swordfsh... Of course seceral were repaired at nantes before the departure.
The Air Base was organised in :
Depot Headquarters
Mechanical Transport Running Section
Aeroplane Repair and Salvage Section
Engine Repair section
General Engineering squadron
Until 16 April 1940, any RAF squadron wasn't based to Nantes. In april, it's the arrival of 98 Squadron with their 16 Battle. In may, two others came but without aircrafts (?) : 114 Squadron (Bleinheim) and N°218 Squadron (Battle).
Meanwhile note that many photos (taken by german troops) are showing many wrecks of Battle, Hurricane and a few Lysander (Squadron 2°Squadron).
To protect the re-embarcation of Allies Troops at St Nazaire, 3 Hurricane squadrons took place at Nantes at mid June (14 -18 june) : Squadron 1, Squadron 73, Squadron 242 (Canadian).
Once again sorry for the mistakes.
Friendly Alain Rabiller
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