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Andreas Airfield lies on the flat northern plain of the Isle of Man, near Ramsey, on the site of the former RAF fighter station of the same name. Today it is a grass airfield used chiefly by the Andreas Gliding Club and local microlight flyers, its wartime runways still tracing the outline of the original three-runway RAF layout.
Andreas Airfield occupies the site of the wartime RAF Andreas, a Fighter Command station built between Andreas and Bride villages in the far north of the Isle of Man. It is now a private grass airfield, still owned by the Morrey family, and is home to the Andreas Gliding Club as well as being used by microlight enthusiasts. For the simulator pilot it offers an unusual mix of a compact, informal flying field set within the ghostly footprint of a large former fighter station, complete with surviving dispersals, a rifle range and an old control tower.
The airfield sits on the fertile north plain of the Isle of Man, between the villages of Andreas and Bride, a short distance inland from the Ayres coastline and a few miles from Ramsey. It lies within the wider airspace environment of the Isle of Man, in the vicinity of Isle of Man Airport at Ronaldsway, though the specific classification of the airspace overhead is not detailed in the sources available.
The airfield retains part of the layout of the former RAF station, which originally had three intersecting runways. Two hard, lit runways are available: one aligned 11/29, with a landing length of 3128 ft on runway 11 and 3474 ft on runway 29, and one aligned 06/24, with a landing length of 2970 ft on runway 06 and 3190 ft on runway 24. Elevation at the field is 95 ft, and there is no ILS.
No specific radio frequency, callsign or navaid information for Andreas is given in the sources consulted, and there is no instrument approach at the field.
Detailed joining and circuit procedures for Andreas are not covered in the sources available, though pilots should expect a relatively informal, unlicensed-airfield style of operation typical of a gliding and microlight site.
The most distinctive landmark near the airfield is Andreas Parish Church, whose tower was deliberately reduced from around 120 feet to half its original height during the war because it stood as a hazard close to the centreline of the main runway; it remains in this shortened form today and is a useful visual cue for locating the field. The Bride hills lie just to the north, close to where a wartime Whitley crashed shortly after take-off, and the Ayres coastline, site of the old air-to-ground gunnery range, runs along the coast to the north of the airfield.
The airfield began life as RAF Andreas, constructed on around 500 acres of farmland between the parishes of Andreas and Bride from mid-1940, in response to the Luftwaffe's night attacks on North West England and its raiders' patrols over Irish Sea shipping. It was built to full fighter-station specification with three intersecting 1,100-yard runways joined by a tarmacadamed perimeter track over three miles long, 24 blast pens for dispersed aircraft, and a dispersed domestic site within Andreas village. The station opened in August 1941 under its first commanding officer, Group Captain J. Marson, and went on to house Spitfire squadrons including No. 457 Squadron RAAF, No. 452 Squadron RAAF (whose most celebrated pilot was Paddy Finucane) and No. 93 Squadron RAF, alongside a detachment of Blackburn Skuas and later Supermarine Walrus amphibians of No. 275 Air Sea Rescue Squadron. Its central position relative to Liverpool, Belfast and Glasgow made it well placed to help protect shipping into those ports, working alongside the operations room at Ramsey Grammar School and radar stations at Dalby, Scarlett and Bride. Andreas Parish Church tower, at 120 feet the dominant feature of the northern plain, was reduced in height on Air Ministry instruction after a fatal accident involving a Spitfire and a lorry near the runway threshold. Wing Commander E.V. Knowles, the station commander, was killed in August 1942 when his Handley Page Whitley failed to clear the Bride hills after take-off. From 1943 the station's role reduced as the early-war emergency passed, and from 1944 it took on duties as an emergency landing ground, notably for American aircraft ferried across the Atlantic, given the length of its main runway and its position near the ferry route. After the war the Air Ministry stipulated that the runways be kept intact and no building take place within the perimeter track before the site passed to the Isle of Man Government Property Trustees and was later purchased at auction by a Mr Morrey, whose family has owned it ever since.
The airfield is now farmed land, with two of the original three RAF runways still in use, home to the Andreas Gliding Club and used also by microlight enthusiasts. Much of the wartime infrastructure survives in traces around the site, including the old control tower, the rifle range butts and a number of dispersals, giving the field a strong sense of its RAF Fighter Command past.
