Acklington was an aerodrome during the First World War and known as Royal Flying Corps Station Southfields.

It was the first German aircraft to fall on English soil in the Second World War (although it was not the first to be shot down in the United Kingdom, that having occurred in Scotland).

The intercept was based on a plot by operators at RAF Danby Beacon, a radar station about ten miles west of Whitby.

Sayer was replaced as Gloster's chief test pilot by his deputy, Michael Daunt.

The airfield is virtually unrecognisable today having been subjected to open cast coal mining.