Coventry Airport
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Coventry City Council decided to develop a civic airport on land that they owned near Baginton in 1933 and the airport was operational by 1936. Shortly afterwards Armstrong Whitworth built an aircraft factory on the site.
The airfield saw service during World War II as a fighter station, RAF Baginton and suffered damage during the carpet bombing of Coventry in 1940.
After the war the airport was returned to civil use as a passenger and freight terminal, with the Channel a key destination - in the 1950s Jersey Airlines operated De Havilland Heron and Douglas Dakota aircraft, while in the 1960s, British United Airways operated Dakota, Carvair and Handley Page Heralds. The 1980s saw Viscounts and Dart Heralds in service for holidays to France, Spain, Italy and Austria. More latterly the .
The lease for the airport was aquired by Air Atlantique in the late-1980's, then sold on to TUI AG in 2004, whose subsidiary Thomsonfly used the airport as a charter hub until 2008.
The airport is home to the Midland Air Museum, the Air Atlantique Historic Flight and the Electric Rail Museum.
By road: Off A45 Toll Bar roundabout
By rail: Bus link from Coventry Rail Station
Bowyer, Chaz, History of the RAF, Dolphin, ASIN B000O52SBU (1984)
Chant, Christopher, History of the RAF: From 1939 to the Present, Caxton, ISBN -10 1840671092 (2000)
Falconer, Jonathan, RAF Bomber Airfields of World War 2, Ian Allan, ISBN 0 7110 2080 9 (1995)
Ifould, Lloyd, Immortal Era, The Birth of British Civil Aviation, Adanr Press, ASIN B0007K0WXS (1948)
Nesbitt, Roy Conyers, RAF: An Illustrated History from 1918, ISBN -10 0750942898 (2007)
Robertson, Bruce, The RAF, a pictorial history, Hale, ASIN B0015MBVFU (1979)
Taylor, J. W. R., Pictorial History of the RAF (3 vols), Ian Allan, ASIN B00187V17A (1968)
Wright, Alan, British Airports, Ian Allan, ISBN-10 0 7110 2452 6 (1996)
Baginton-Coventry Airport - Images & Recollections by Barry Clay, Part I
Baginton-Coventry Airport - Images & Recollections by Barry Clay, Part II
Control Towers - RAF Baginton
Hansard - July 1955, Commons debate on Aircraft Factory, Coventry