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From Abandoned forgotten and little known airfields website
Kelstern airfield (also known as RAF Kelstern) was an RAF Bomber base 210 kilometres north of London.
A night landing ground existed at Mill farm on the east side of the later air base between 1917 and 1919. It was intended for aircraft of 33 Sqn that, while hunting for Zeppelins, might run short on fuel. It was rarely used, however.
Construction of the World War II air base began in July 1942 at about half a mile (roughly 800 metres) northwest of the night landing ground. A nearby night decoy site (for RAF Binbrook) was abandoned to deconflict with the new airfield. The airfield featured three concrete runways, a perimeter taxi track, 'loop' type aircraft parkings and at least one T2 hangar.
In September 1943 RAF Kelstern opened as No 12 Base (Binbrook) substation. 100 Sqn's C-flight provided the nucleus for a new squadron that stood up at the base: 625 Sqn., which was activated on 1 October 1943, operating Lancaster bombers. They flew their first operational mission less than 3 weeks later. A year later 625 Sqn provided the core for the reformed 170 Sqn, which flew its first operation mission on 19 October and then moved out to RAF Dunholm Lodge on 21 October 1944.
An interesting experiment took place at Kelstern in early 1945. Because Lincoln bombers had a larger wingspan than Lancasters, tram tracks which had been taken up from RAF Grimsby were transported to Kelstern and laid into the T2 hangar on the technical site at the west side of the airfield. A special trolley arrived and was placed on the tram tracks, shortly after one of the Lincoln prototypes was flown in, this was gently mounted onto the trolley, and the aircraft was then dragged into the hangar sideways! It did work, but was clearly an expensive and time-consuming process.
By April 1945, HQ 1 Gp (Bomber Command) had decided to reorganise and therefore moved 625 Sqn to RAF Scampton. With congestion and associated risks of crashes in overlapping circuits over Lincolnshire, the decision was taken not to base any further flying units at Kelstern. The airfield was closed in May 1945.