It is known that under his official Air Force title of Aircraftsman Second Class T. E. Shaw, the archaeologist, (former) army officer, diplomat, and writer, T. E. Lawrence worked at RAF Bridlington during the 1930s.

During the First World War, a Royal Naval Air Service seaplane was stationed temporarily in Bridlington Harbour.

[3] An RAF site was opened on the harbourside at Bridlington in 1929; its remit was to supply dummy craft to be moored in the sea off the Yorkshire Coast for bombing and target practice.

Shaw (Lawrence) had arrived in the early 1930s as part of his RAF service and his drive to develop better boats for the Marine Branch.

[14] Shaw had witnessed a seaplane crashing into the sea off RAF Mount Batten and was greatly affected by the rescue of the airmen; most tellingly, how the boats were not able to reach the downed aircrew in time.

[15] Aircraftman Second Class Shaw had been sent to first RAF Mount Batten, (then to Bridlington) ostensibly to keep him "out of the limelight" after a period when he was serving in India and stories started to surface in the press that he was there because of the civil war in Afghanistan.

Shaw was not an engineer, but his methodical problem solving and intellectual capacity allowed him to become quite proficient in the boat design programme within the Marine Branch at Bridlington.

[17] During the second part of the 1930s, the base was the home of a merchant ship named Kernoozer, which was a 500-tonne (550-ton) vessel employed to maintain targets at the Skipsea/Cowden bombing range.

[18] Kernoozer was laid up at the start of the Second World War, but the wartime work pressures meant that she was needed again at Bridlington.

[24] Boats selected for the ASR role were fitted with machine guns in case of aerial attack whilst in the North Sea.

[35][36] After the Second World War, RAF Bridlington was scaled back and only the Marine Craft Unit continued to exist.

Whilst the ASR function officially ceased in 1946, the craft at Bridlington often assisted the RNLI with searches for those missing at sea post-war, with at least one rescue documented although in that particular case, the casualty had died, despite the efforts of the RAF Crew in trying to revive her.

[42] By 1972, Bridlington was one of only five MCU bases left in the employ of the Royal Air Force; the other four were Alness, Falmouth, Holyhead and Mount Batten.