Modern Lincolnshire Part I (1914–1945)

A county on the cusp of war (1914)

By 1914, Lincolnshire was already an industrial force. Six decades of previous growth had built world-class engineering firms in Lincoln and Grantham. Grimsby had become the busiest fishing port on earth, and the county's farms fed much of the nation.

That hard-won industrial maturity was about to face its greatest test. Two global conflicts and a brutal economic depression would pull Lincolnshire from the factory floor to the airfield runway over the next thirty years.

The county's flat landscape, its engineering expertise, and the quiet endurance of its people would prove decisive. Lincolnshire was about to step onto the world stage.

Lincoln's tank makers: from workshop to Western Front (1914–1918)

The declaration of war transformed Lincoln's engineering firms almost overnight. William Foster & Co., makers of agricultural machinery, were secretly commissioned to solve one of the war's most urgent problems: how to break the deadlock of trench warfare.

Working in conditions of strict secrecy, Foster's engineers designed and built 'Little Willie' in 1915, the world's first functional combat tank. It was a remarkable feat of improvisation, built by men who weeks earlier had been making tractors.

Local workers went on to produce around 400 tanks in total, including the agile Whippet. The designs pioneered in Lincoln were adopted across British industry, enabling the production of over 2,600 tanks that helped turn the tide on the Western Front.

The tank did not win the war alone. But it broke the stalemate that had cost hundreds of thousands of lives. That breakthrough began in a Lincoln workshop.

The skies above Lincoln: a county takes flight (1914–1918)

While Foster's engineers were building tanks, another transformation was taking place across the city. Ruston & Proctor rapidly retooled their factories for aviation, becoming one of the most significant aircraft manufacturers in Britain.

By the end of the war, the firm had produced 2,750 complete aircraft and 4,000 aero engines. Among them were over 1,600 Sopwith Camels, making Ruston & Proctor the largest single manufacturer of that iconic fighter in Britain.

This colossal output was powered by a new kind of workforce. Women, known as 'munitionettes', flooded into the workshops to take on the assembly lines, many suffering ill health from the toxic varnish used on aircraft fabric.

The human cost on the front line was felt with brutal speed. The Grimsby Chums, the 10th Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment, suffered 502 casualties on the first day of the Somme in July 1916, carving a permanent scar into the county's memory.

Hardship and the gathering storm (1919–1938)

The end of the war brought not relief, but severe disruption. Military contracts vanished overnight and Lincoln's factories faced a sharp industrial slump. Farming, the county's bedrock, was plunged into a prolonged agricultural depression as wartime price guarantees were removed.

Wheat values fell to around half their pre-war level. Unemployment spread across both the farming and engineering sectors, accelerating a migration of workers from the countryside into towns like Lincoln and Grimsby.

Yet as one crisis receded, another gathered on the horizon. RAF Cranwell had been established in 1920 as the world's first dedicated military air academy, anchoring the county's future to aviation. As Nazi Germany rearmed through the 1930s, the British government looked again to Lincolnshire's flat open landscape.

Engineers moved in to purchase farmland and construct a new network of heavy-duty airfields. Bases like Scampton and Waddington were expanded and modernised. Lincolnshire was being quietly prepared for another war.

The making of Bomber County (1939–1945)

Lincolnshire's geography made it the natural fortress for an air war. Its flat terrain was ideal for the long concrete runways needed by heavy bombers, and its eastern coastline offered the most direct route into occupied Europe.

The county became the operational heart of RAF Bomber Command. At the war's peak, 49 active airfields were scattered across the landscape, hosting tens of thousands of aircrew and ground staff from Britain, the Commonwealth, and allied nations including Poland and Canada.

The skies were dominated by the Avro Lancaster, the workhorse of the strategic bombing campaign. It was from RAF Scampton that No. 617 Squadron launched the legendary Dambusters raid on the night of 16–17 May 1943, destroying German dams in a mission of extraordinary precision that captured the imagination of the world.

Lincolnshire had earned its enduring nickname. It was Bomber County in every sense.

The home front and the human cost (1939–1945)

The county itself was far from safe. Grimsby's fishing fleet was requisitioned as naval minesweepers, and the port's strategic importance made it a prime Luftwaffe target. On 14 June 1943, German aircraft dropped around 3,000 SD2 Butterfly Bombs over the town.

The delayed-action bomblets scattered across the streets paralysed Grimsby for weeks and killed scores of civilians.

Inland, the Women's Land Army worked the fields to maintain food production. By 1945, 2,004 volunteers were deployed across Lincolnshire's farms, operating mechanised equipment that had transformed agricultural labour beyond recognition.

The greatest price was paid by the aircrews. More than 25,600 who took off from Lincolnshire's bases never returned. Across all theatres, Bomber Command lost 58,000 personnel, among the highest casualty rates of any branch of the British armed forces.

For returning crews, the sight of Lincoln Cathedral rising from the flat fenland became a powerful landmark guiding them home through the darkness.

A legacy of iron and air (1945 onwards)

The end of the war in 1945 did not return Lincolnshire to its old self. The conflict left a network of derelict control towers and crumbling runways slowly being reclaimed by nature, and a profound historical burden that the county has never set aside.

The legacy of Bomber Command is not without complexity. The strategic bombing campaign remains one of the most debated chapters of World War II, raising questions about civilian casualties and the ethics of aerial warfare that historians continue to wrestle with today.

That complexity is acknowledged at the International Bomber Command Centre outside Lincoln, whose soaring spire looks out across the city towards the cathedral. It stands as a permanent memorial to the 58,000 who served and died, and ensures that Lincolnshire's pivotal role in modern history remains visible for all.

The runways fell quiet. But the airfields, the engineering works, and the mechanised farms that war had built did not disappear. They became the foundations on which a new Lincolnshire would be constructed—one defined not by conflict, but by agriculture, education, tourism, and the green energy of the North Sea.