Unsung heroes of wartime air base to be fleshed out in digital archive

When veterans of RAF Danby Beacon on the North York Moors first held a reunion in 1993 they were astonished to find nothing left of the secret base bristling with radar towers and anti-aircraft guns that once sprawled across the moorland.

Two years later they gathered again to see a plaque unveiled at the historic site – and yesterday they stood in tribute at a ceremony to celebrate the start of a digital archive of the station.

Danby Beacon got on the wartime "scoreboard" early when it guided Fl Lt Peter Townsend to shoot down the first German aircraft over English soil – a Heinkel 111 bomber – on February 3 1940.

After the station closed in 1957 the array of wooden and metal radar towers - some 350ft high - were sold for scrap or chopped up for firewood. The huts went off to farmers to house livestock.

For years nothing remained except the remains of some flooded bunkers until Eric Hampson, who served at Danby in the 1950s, began tracing air force staff who served at the site.

He met Freddie Smith, of Outwood, Wakefield, who had arranged the 1993 and 1995 reunions, and they decided to donate a time capsule of memories to the North York Moors National Park.

Yesterday the modern working Danby Beacon, run by a local trust, was lit to celebrate the event, which was also marked by a flypast by an RAF training aircraft.

Although a couple of sticks of German bombs fell near the camp, the main problem being sandwiched between thousands of acres of heather and the North Sea was finding something to do in the blackout.

Former airman Mr Smith, now 88, who while serving at the camp dated actress Billy Whitelaw's sister Bobbie, then a WAAF, set up a camp cinema in a disused army hut and played trombone in the dance band.

Former Leading Air Craft woman Dorothy Thwaite, 88, from Wath-upon-Dearne, Rotherham, was delighted Danby Beacon would not be forgotten.