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Royal Naval Air Station Burscough – commissioned as HMS Ringtail – was a wartime Fleet Air Arm base built on flat Lancashire farmland south-west of the town of Burscough, near Ormskirk. The Admiralty acquired around 650 acres in December 1942 and the airfield was commissioned on 1 September 1943. From the start it was designed for a specialist task: providing day and night fighter facilities and training naval aviators and units for the distinct demands of carrier operations.
HMS Ringtail’s layout was characteristically ‘naval.’ Instead of the RAF’s usual three runways, Burscough had four, and they were narrower than typical RAF runways. This extra choice of heading allowed aircraft to take off and land as close into wind as possible – mimicking the priorities of a carrier deck where wind direction and relative airflow are critical. The station included a three-storey control tower, multiple hangar types and extensive hardstandings, while accommodation was largely temporary wartime hutting.
Wartime activity at Burscough was dominated by formation, working-up and training. Many Fleet Air Arm squadrons passed through for short periods before embarking on carriers or moving to operational naval air stations. One of the first units to operate here was 809 Naval Air Squadron, equipped with Supermarine Seafires, which arrived in December 1943 and then embarked to an escort carrier. Other activity included torpedo-related work-up and radar-linked training, reflecting how quickly naval aviation was becoming more technical and system-driven.
The airfield also supported specialist squadrons with instructional roles, including Air-to-Surface Vessel (ASV) training and radar trials. These functions mattered because the Fleet Air Arm was not only about fighter combat; it also depended on navigation, instrument procedures, radar interpretation and coordinated search – skills essential for convoy protection, submarine hunting and the projection of naval air power. Stations like Ringtail provided the repetition and space for that training to be done safely before crews faced the added pressure of deck operations.
Although the airfield was in England, HMS Ringtail’s wartime context was global. As the Fleet Air Arm expanded its responsibilities from the Atlantic and Arctic to the Mediterranean and Far East, it needed a steady supply of crews trained to a naval standard, including disciplined circuits and confident flying in marginal conditions – because a carrier recovery in poor visibility was unforgiving.
Flying at Burscough largely ended in May 1946. After that, the station moved into care-and-maintenance and was used for storage of engines and equipment before finally closing as a military airfield in 1957. Today the former station is partly redeveloped and partly rural, but surviving structures still hint at its wartime purpose. HMS Ringtail’s legacy is the quiet but crucial one shared by many training bases: it helped turn aviation skill into reliable naval air power.