RAF Montrose

Montrose was the first operational military air station in Great Britain: five machines of No. 2 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, reached it from Farnborough on 26 February 1913. Three months later, on 27 May, Lieutenant Desmond L. Arthur fell to his death when the right wing of B.E. biplane No. 205 folded at 2,500 feet. What makes this haunting unusual is the paperwork behind it. The Royal Aero Club found a concealed and badly made repair in the wing spar; a government committee dismissed that finding in 1916 as "quite unfounded"; and two of its members quietly took it back at the end of the year. The apparition in flying kit reported around the officers' mess belongs to those same months of 1916, and the sightings are said to have stopped once the December report appeared. The airfield closed to the RAF in 1950 and now holds a volunteer-run museum whose website never mentions the ghost at all.

No. 2 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps flew north from Farnborough in February 1913 with five machines. Flight followed the journey week by week. The pilots were "Capts. C. A. H. Longcroft, J. H. W. Becke, and G. W. P. Dawes, and Lieuts. F. F. Waldron and P. W. L. Herbert", two of them on B.E. biplanes and the rest on Maurice Farmans, and the squadron notes printed on 8 March 1913 record that "On the 26th, all the machines reached Montrose". Their first ground was at Upper Dysart, south of the town. The national record of the historic environment describes what came next: "Montrose (Broomfield) military aerodrome [AS_L1_30] NO75NW 31 succeeded the first Montrose aerodrome at Upper Dysart, which had been built before the First World War." Six side-opening aeroplane sheds went up along the south-west edge of the new ground in 1913-14, and they had been "prefabricated in Glasgow and were originally intended for the Upper Dysart site". Lieutenant Desmond L. Arthur, an Irishman holding Royal Aero Club aviator's certificate No. 233, left the Montrose flying ground at about 7 a.m. on Tuesday 27 May 1913 in B.E. biplane No. 205 with a 70 h.p. Renault engine. Report No. 12 of the Accidents Investigation Committee of the Royal Aero Club, printed in Flight on 21 June 1913, sets down what the eye-witnesses saw. After about thirty minutes in the air he was "descending in a left-hand spiral at about 2,500 feet"; the aircraft "appeared to change on to the right bank"; then "the outside tip of the top right-hand plane was observed to fail and the planes of the right wing collapsed". Arthur fell from the machine and "struck the ground about 160 yards from the place where the aircraft fell, and was killed instantly". The Committee examined the wreck and found a repair that no record admitted. The upper right wing tip "had been broken at some time or another and repaired in three places". The splice joining the new wood to the old "was very roughly made and badly fitted, there being places in which the glue was an eighth of an inch thick", bound with whipcord "which was not treated with cobbler's wax or varnished to prevent it becoming loose", and hidden under "new fabric" that was "of different material from that of the rest of the wing". The Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Aircraft Factory "reported that their records contained no entry of this repair having been made to the wing of this aircraft since it was rebuilt". The primary cause, in the Committee's opinion, was "the failure of the faulty joint in the repair to the rear main spar", work so bad "that it could not possibly be regarded as the work of a conscientious and competent workman". Parliament took it up within days. In the Commons debate reported by Flight on 14 June 1913, William Joynson-Hicks asked "What right had the Government to send a young lieutenant up in a machine whose condition was precarious?", and told the House that Arthur had flown one of the B.E. machines "two days after it was flown to Montrose". Colonel Seely, Secretary for War, replied that "Every machine was most carefully inspected before a flight was made". Three years later the case was reopened by a committee that went the other way. Noel Pemberton Billing, MP, had accused the air services of criminal negligence, and the committee appointed under Mr Justice Bailhache answered his charges in an Interim Report dated 3 August 1916. Arthur's death is case "(q.) No. 205". The report dates it "May 28th, 1913", one day out; it holds that the suggestion of a concealed patch "depends on the unsupported evidence of one man out of these 23 witnesses"; and it ends: "A perusal of the transcript of the notes of evidence leads to the conclusion that the suggestion of the patch is quite unfounded." Billing read the 1913 report back at the Committee from the floor of the House, in a speech carried by Flight on 31 August 1916: "He gets into this groggy machine to which I have referred and is dashed to death from 4,000 feet." The correction, when it came, was smaller than the story usually allows. The Final Report was issued on Wednesday 20 December 1916 and disposed of the matter in a sentence: "In our Interim Report, dated August 3rd last, we dealt exclusively with the charge of criminal negligence made by Mr. Pemberton Billing, M.P. We do not refer to that charge again." What changed sits in an appendix signed by two of the seven members, Charles Bright and J. G. Butcher, printed by Flight on 11 January 1917: "it now appears to us to be more than likely that at least one highly defective repair had, in actual fact, been made at some time or another to the machine", probably by a man who "had repaired it as best he (or they) could, to evade detection and punishment". They were amending the Interim Report "so far as we personally are concerned, and to the extent indicated". The ghost belongs to that same autumn. C. G. Grey, editor of The Aeroplane and a friend of Arthur, attached Arthur's name to a figure in flying kit reported around the old No. 2 Squadron mess in 1916. Dan Paton, then curator of the heritage centre, gave the sequence to The Scotsman in 2013: "It was as if the spirit of this proud pioneer airman had returned to earth at this slight to his reputation as a skilled pilot. The Court of Enquiry eventually cleared Lt Arthur of blame and, once exonerated, the ghost made one last appearance on Christmas Eve 1916 and then disappeared." The station outlived everyone in the story. By 1918 it was "No. 32 Training Depot Station (NW Area; No. 20 Group, 30th Wing)", with 180 officer and NCO pupils and 659 base staff, "of whom 216 were women". The depot was disbanded in May 1919; the aerodrome passed back to the army in 1920, reopened as an RAF station in 1936, and "The RAF left in 1950", although the museum on the site dates the closure to 1952. In April 1983 a group of local enthusiasts began saving what was left; one of them, Ian McIntosh, set up the trust that in 1992 bought "the former Watch Office and ground".

The site is now Montrose Air Station Museum, on the Broomfield ground where the sheds of 1913-14 stand. The address it publishes is "Waldron Road, Broomfield, Montrose, Angus, Scotland. DD10 9BD", the telephone 01674 678 222 and the address for enquiries [email protected]. It is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, number SC040375, staffed entirely by volunteers. Hours as published for 2026: "Friday 10:00 to 16:00, Saturday 10:00 to 16:00, Sunday 12:00 to 16:00", with "Last entry is at 15:00" and no booking required. Admission in 2026 costs £10.00 for adults and £8.00 concessions, or £11.00 and £8.80 under the Gift Aid rate; entry for children under 16 is free, since "we appreciate how important it is that they learn, in an enjoyable way, the history and legacy of those who served at Montrose Air Station". Refreshments come from vending machines. Dogs are admitted on leads. The museum posts closures on its Facebook page and states that "Where there are Met Office weather warnings which give us cause for concern, the museum may close for the safety of visitors and our volunteers". On access the museum says: "The museum buildings are all single-story and accessible by wheelchairs. Where a building is slightly raised, there are ramps to use. The original RAF wooden buildings have narrow doorways and corridors but can still be used by wheelchairs." A disabled parking space sits outside reception and a disabled toilet is at reception; a carer accompanying a disabled visitor pays nothing. Arthur's grave is in Montrose itself. The museum's roll of honour lists him first, at "Sleepy Hillock Cemetery", where twenty-three other airmen from the station are also buried. The heritage centre announced a wreath-laying at that grave for 27 May 2013, the centenary of the crash, "at the behest of Lt Arthur's family".