RNAS Stretton (HMS Blackcap)

Royal Navy Air Station Stretton HMS Blackcap
Part of Fleet Air Arm (FAA)
Near Warrington, Cheshire, England
Current site of RNAS Stretton
Coordinates	53°20′42″N 2°31′31″W / 53.34500°N 2.52528°W / 53.34500; -2.52528Coordinates: 53°20′42″N 2°31′31″W / 53.34500°N 2.52528°W / 53.34500; -2.52528
Type	Naval Air Station
Site history
Built	1942
In use	1942–1958

Royal Naval Air Station Stretton (HMS Blackcap), was an airfield in the village of Appleton Thorn, close to the village of Stretton, south of Warrington, in Cheshire, England.

The airfield was southwest of junction 9 of the present-day M56 motorway.

RNAS Stretton was originally planned as a Royal Air Force night-fighter station to protect Liverpool and Manchester from Luftwaffe air raids during the Second World War. But changes in German tactics meant that the airfield was not required, so it was transferred to the Admiralty on completion; three runways and numerous hangars had been built.

HMS Blackcap was commissioned on 1 June 1942 and forty-one Fleet Air Arm Squadrons were based there for varying periods, some aircraft being flown directly to and from aircraft carriers operating in the Irish Sea and other nearby waters.

Fairey Aviation used two large A1 (aircraft production) hangars on the northeast edge of the airfield for the modification, repair and flight-testing of Barracudas, Fireflies and Fulmars before they were dispatched to their operational squadrons. From 1944 HMS Blackcap was also used as an Aircraft Maintenance Yard, a large hangar complex being constructed to the northwest of the airfield for this activity.

At the end of the war American Naval Aircraft were flown into Blackcap to be broken up for disposal. The Aircraft Maintenance Yard meant that the airfield continued to operate and, at its peak, handled one third of all Fleet Air Arm Aircraft and all its spare engines.

In 1947 the Fleet Air Arm decided to form Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Squadrons. The first to be based at Stretton was 1831 Naval Air Squadron, a fighter squadron, which was reformed here on 1 June 1947, initially equipped with Supermarine Seafire fighters and a single North American Harvard trainer.