RNAS Hatston sat on the south shore of Kirkwall Bay, a mile or so north-west of the town, and just close enough to Scapa Flow to matter every time an aircraft engine note was heard over Orkney. Commissioned as HMS Sparrowhawk in October 1939, it became the Royal Navy’s principal air station in the islands, built for the unromantic business of guarding the Home Fleet’s anchorage and supporting the steady traffic of ship’s flights, patrols and front-line squadrons passing through.
The choice of Hatston was practical. Long before the Admiralty moved in, the area had been used for civil flying, and local knowledge mattered. The best-known figure here is Captain E. E. “Ted” Fresson, the northern aviation pioneer who argued that Hatston’s position and approaches made it a sound place for an airfield as war approached. He also warned about the ground. Orkney weather can turn grass to porridge in hours, and if the Navy wanted a station that could operate year-round, it needed a surface that would stand up to rain, frost and heavy aircraft. Hatston’s hard runways, laid down early, are often described as among the first of their kind in Britain, and they helped make the station something you could rely on in winter as well as summer.
That investment paid off quickly because RNAS Hatston was designed as a working naval base, not a showpiece. It was there to house and service disembarked squadrons, to take in ship’s aircraft when carriers and cruisers were in Scapa Flow, and to give the fleet a nearby air arm that could be launched quickly when an alarm came in. As Orkney’s defences thickened, Hatston sat inside a wider network of sites and batteries, but it remained one of the few places in the islands where fighters could be kept at readiness and aircraft could be maintained properly close to the main anchorage.
Hatston’s first big claim on the wider war came in April 1940, in the hectic opening of the Norwegian campaign. On 10 April, Blackburn Skua dive-bombers operating from Hatston flew to Bergen and attacked the German light cruiser Königsberg, sinking her in harbour. It is still one of the most striking examples of Hatston’s real purpose: not merely to guard ships at anchor, but to serve as a northern springboard, close enough to Norway to strike and then bring aircraft back without asking too much of the aircrew in terms of range. Even then, the margins were tight. Losses on the return journey, and aircraft arriving back tired and damaged, underlined how Orkney’s geography could be both advantage and hazard.
Day-to-day, though, RNAS Hatston was about defence. The Home Fleet anchorage was an obvious target and an equally obvious subject for enemy reconnaissance. The Luftwaffe’s interest in Scapa Flow meant that Orkney lived with the constant possibility of incoming aircraft, and Hatston was built to answer that with fighters and fast reaction. One of the key squadrons associated with the station is 804 Naval Air Squadron, formed there at the end of November 1939 and initially flying Sea Gladiators. Its work was not glamorous: patrols, standing by at readiness, getting airborne when reports came in, and then landing again to do it all the next day in wind and rain.
That defensive role produced Hatston’s best-remembered air combat story. By autumn 1940, 804 Squadron had re-equipped with Grumman Martlets, the British name for early Wildcats. On Christmas Day 1940, Martlets from Hatston intercepted a German Junkers Ju 88 reconnaissance aircraft connected with Scapa Flow. The Ju 88 was damaged and forced into a crash landing on Orkney. It is widely described as the first combat victory in Europe for the Wildcat family. If you want a single moment that captures what RNAS Hatston was for, that is probably it: the station exists, an intruder appears, the fighters scramble, and the threat is stopped before it can do its work.
RNAS Hatston was more than fighters and occasional headlines. It was a working naval air station in a harsh environment, and its daily rhythm was shaped by maintenance, weather, and routine flying. Photographs taken at the time show the breadth of types that passed through: Swordfish on the ground, aircraft in hangars, and later-war machines taking their turn in exercises. The point is not to make a catalogue, but to stress that RNAS Hatston was an operational tool. Aircraft did not sit idle there for long. They were launched, serviced, refuelled, repaired and launched again, often with salt spray in the air and low cloud pressing down over the bay.
It also had a seaplane connection. A concrete slipway built at Hatston allowed for the launch and recovery of seaplanes when that suited local needs, and it remains one of the more tangible wartime fragments on the shoreline. For a base charged with operating in a maritime theatre, the ability to handle aircraft from water as well as land made sense, even if the station’s main story is told in runways and hangars rather than in flying boat moorings.
Hatston’s naval life ended quickly after victory. It was paid off in 1945 and then became Kirkwall’s civil airport for a brief period before the limitations of its site and runways became clearer in the post-war years. Flying shifted to Grimsetter, and Hatston closed as an airport in 1948. Much of the old airfield has since been absorbed into an industrial estate and housing, but its footprint still influences the place. Stand in the right spot around Kirkwall Bay and you can still read the logic of it: close to the town, close to Scapa Flow, and built for the plain, hard work of keeping watch over the fleet.