Qualla: RAF Hell's Mouth

RAF Hell's Mouth: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jeff Buck, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name was already a warning before the RAF ever arrived. Welsh sailors had long called the south-facing crescent of Porth Neigwl 'Hell's Mouth' for the way it swallowed ships - a great open bay on the underside of the Llŷn Peninsula, exposed to every gale that came howling up out of the Irish Sea. In 1937 the Air Ministry decided that a coast so hostile to mariners was perfect for teaching young airmen how to drop bombs and fire guns at the sea. The trainees and the targets shared the same beach.

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Image: Jeff Buck | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Hell's Mouth: Compulsory Purchase

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Air Ministry took seven farms and the entire seven-mile beach by compulsory purchase, sweeping from the slopes of Mynydd Rhiw down to Cilan Head. The grass strip was laid down beside the dunes in 1937 as an outpost for No. 5 Armament Training Camp, headquartered ten miles nor...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

RAF Hell's Mouth: Anchored Rafts and Canvas Sheets

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The targets were almost absurdly modest for what the war would soon become. Out in the bay a couple of anchored rafts rode the swell, and trainees aimed eight-and-a-half-pound smoke bombs at them from biplanes - Hawker Harts, Demons, Audaxes - the open-cockpit fighters and light ...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Hell's Mouth: A Railway for Wooden Aircraft

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. By July 1940 something stranger had appeared between the hangars and the sea: a narrow-gauge railway in an oval loop, built specifically so trainee gunners could shoot at a moving target. A motorised flat truck carried a wooden model of an aircraft along the rails, pulled by a pu...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Hell's Mouth: The Polish Wellington

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 1941 the RAF's operational aircraft had outgrown what Hell's Mouth could teach them. The grass strip was extended and reopened as a relief landing ground for the No. 9 (Observers) Advanced Flying Unit at Penrhos, with Avro Ansons droning across the bay dropping twelve-pound sm...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Hell's Mouth: Returned to the Cattle

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eric Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0. The airfield closed to flying in early 1947 and the land went back to agriculture. Walk Porth Neigwl today and there is almost nothing to suggest what happened here - the bay is best known now to surfers, who appreciate the same relentless Atlantic swell the Air Ministry chose fo...

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Image: Eric Jones | CC BY-SA 2.0