IT was one of the most glamorous periods in the history of air travel – and yet many locals today don’t know that Poole was at the heart of it.

The recent unveiling of a plaque at Poole Museum commemorates the town's role in the heyday of flying boat travel.

The museum building was once the site of Airways House, the HQ of British Overseas Airways Corporation flying boats.

Poole’s eight years at the centre of flying boat history began in September 1, 1939. Until then, Imperial Airways had run its seaplane service from Southampton, but as war loomed, the city’s Spitfire factory made it a target for the Luftwaffe.

Poole was surveyed that August and the evacuation happened quickly on September 1.

The flying boat traffic section was moored alongside the Quay and flying was controlled by vessels moored off Brownsea Island.

Imperial Airways’ staff moved back to Southampton after a few weeks, but were sent back to Poole as German tanks rolled across much of Europe in May 1940.

They were based at 4 High Street, the site now occupied by Poole Museum.

An Act of Parliament in November 1939 had merged Imperial Airways with British Airways Ltd. They began operating jointly as British Overseas Airways Corporation in April 1940, meaning Poole can claim to be the birthplace of the modern British Airways.

Leslie Dawson, who told the story of the period in his book Fabulous Flying Boats, wrote that, after the merger, “the Poole terminal embarked on eight full years that would prove unmatched in the annals of British flying boat operations”.

Many passengers were government officials and other VIPs. They travelled in blacked-out train carriages from London to Bournemouth West, from where a Rolls Royce took them to Poole. The Rolls was later replaced by a coach.

With all other airlines grounded, Poole’s flying boats became the only passenger service in and out of the country. Seaplanes from the Royal Australian Air Force, the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm’s seaplane training division all flew out of Poole Harbour at that time.

During the war, foreign secretary Anthony Eden, press baron Lord Beaverbrook and President Roosevelt’s representative Harry Hopkins all came through Poole, along with film stars Gracie Fields, George Formby, Jean Simmons and Stewart Granger and singer Vera Lynn.

Poole lost just one flying boat to an air raid – on May 12, 1941, when a Heinkel aircraft dropped two bombs into the Parkstone shoal moorings, wrecking the flying boat Maia. The Heinkel was itself hit by an anti-aircraft shell and crashed, with three crew killed and two captured.

Most of the BOAC staff and equipment left Poole to return to Southampton on Easter Monday, March 29, 1948. The last flying boat arrival and departure were handled by a skeleton staff on the Tuesday.

Poole had seen 34,000 passengers fly in to its harbour during the flying boat years, with a peak of 463 movements in 1945.

The glamour of flying boats was to return to Poole just once – on August 23, 1976, when Southern Cross arrived in the harbour.

Its owners were the airline pilot Captain Charles Blair and his wife, the famous Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara.

Blair had been chief pilot at Pan Am and established Antilles, the world’s largest seaplane airline.

He took Southern Cross to Ireland in 1976, where Charlton Marshall man Michael Goghlan suggested he should fly to Poole.

Among the swimmers off Durley Chine that day was aviation enthusiast Leslie Dawson, the future author of a history of flying boats.

“I happened to be swimming out in the sea. I didn’t realise this was going on. I just heard the roar and saw this thing not more than a mile from me,” he told the Echo last year.

He recorded how passengers on the pleasure boat Maid of the Aisles were amazed to see the aircraft settle on the water just 100 yards away.

The aircraft made nine flights over the coming days before returning to Ireland. Blair brought the seaplane back to Ireland the following year, but objections from birdwatchers and sailors scotched a return to Poole.

After Blair’s death in an aviation accident in 1978, a campaign started in Dorset to return Southern Cross to Britain. But it was Southampton that eventually welcomed the aircraft to its Hall of Aviation, opened in 1984 and now named Solent Sky.

Poole, meanwhile, had done little to commemorate its flying boat years. In 1948, councillors had turned down the chance to keep the redundant flying boat Canopus as a memorial, and the plane was broken up at Hythe.

But enthusiasts from Poole Flying Boats Celebration (PFBC) have been working to mark the town’s part in aviation history, and they funded the new plaque with the support of sponsors.

Jeremy Waters, honorary president of PFBC, said at the unveiling: “I’m very pleased to see the plaque and I hope Poole people will be equally pleased because it is their heritage. This was the only international airport the UK had for 10 years.”