Qualla: RAF Penrhos https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:13 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: RAF Penrhos https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos RAF Penrhos: Introduction https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos/ Three middle-aged Welshmen walked up to the half-built bombing school at Penyberth on the night of 8 September 1936, set fire to it, and then walked into the Pwllheli police station to report what they had done. They wanted the trial. Saunders Lewis, D. J. Williams and Lewis Valentine had argued for months that the Air Ministry's decision to build an RAF airfield on a farm Lewis called 'one of the essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom and literature' was an assault not just on a building but on a language. When the trial moved from Caernarfon to the Old Bailey - a juryless verdict in London for an act in Wales - the three men became national heroes overnight. The airfield was built anyway.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/u/raf-penrhos-wp/gcku-raf-penrhos-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full RAF Penrhos: Penyberth Burns https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos/ Penyberth had been one of the great resting houses of the Welsh poetic tradition, a sixteenth-century farm where the cywyddwyr were said to have stopped on their travels through the Llŷn. The Air Ministry bought 250 acres in 1936 and razed it. Saunders Lewis was a founding member...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/u/raf-penrhos-wp/gcku-raf-penrhos-penyberth-burns.mp3 0:06 2 full RAF Penrhos: Wallaces Over Cardigan Bay https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos/ RAF Penrhos opened on 1 February 1937 - five months after the fire - as the home of No. 5 Armament Training Camp. The first aircraft were Westland Wallaces, lumbering general-purpose biplanes that towed drogues out over Cardigan Bay so trainee gunners could practise on a moving t...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/u/raf-penrhos-wp/gcku-raf-penrhos-wallaces-over-cardigan-bay.mp3 0:06 3 full RAF Penrhos: The Czechoslovak Detachment https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos/ The Czechoslovak Hurricanes of 312 Squadron arrived in late 1940 and stayed until April 1941 - a small detachment, easy to miss in the unit lists, but part of a remarkable wartime story. The Czechs had escaped their dismembered country in 1939, flown for France until France fell,...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/u/raf-penrhos-wp/gcku-raf-penrhos-the-czechoslovak-detachment.mp3 0:06 4 full RAF Penrhos: A Refuge for Exiles https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos/ The airfield closed on 21 October 1946, less than ten years after it had opened. But the site did not empty. The Polish Resettlement Corps took over part of the camp, using the wartime huts to house Polish soldiers, sailors and airmen who had fought alongside Britain and now had ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/u/raf-penrhos-wp/gcku-raf-penrhos-a-refuge-for-exiles.mp3 0:06 5 full RAF Penrhos: What Remains https://qualla.com/raf-penrhos/ The rest of the site is now Pen-y-berth caravan park, named for the farm the burners died to save. The 400-yard tarmac strip that survived from the wartime airfield was used by private pilots through the 1980s, who flew in on summer weekends to sit in lawn chairs beside their Ces...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/k/u/raf-penrhos-wp/gcku-raf-penrhos-what-remains.mp3 0:06 6 full