SIR – Surely the Leeds-Bradford airfield’s true beginnings lie in the years immediately after the First World War?

In those days, a group of well-heeled young men, led by a certain Geoffrey Ambler of Heaton, formed an amateur flying club at Yeadon (would they could see it now).

Each Sunday when I was a child, weather permitting of course, we would hear a sound overhead like a speeded-up sewing machine. “That’ll be Geoffrey Ambler,” my dad remarked. “Let’s watch him.”

We were treated to a breathtaking display of aerobatics; speed diving, ‘victory rolls’, wing-waggling and lots of ‘looping-the-loop’, all executed in a small, colourfully-named Gipsy Moth aircraft.

Unless I am mistaken, I believe that it was from the enthusiastic members of this flying club that a squadron was formed to serve in the Second World War.

These are personal recollections and may be faulty in detail, but I have always felt that this was the true start of the present airfield, in the early Twenties.

Bradford (as was usual in those days) led the way.

Mrs Constance M Galilee, Heights Lane, Bradford