RAF Faldingworth

RAF Faldingworth
RAF Faldingworth;
IATA: none – ICAO: none
Summary
Airport type	Military
Owner	Ministry of Defence
Operator	Royal Air Force
Location	Faldingworth, Lincolnshire
Built	1943
In use	1943-1972
Elevation AMSL	49 ft / 15 m
Coordinates	53°20′58″N 000°27′23″W / 53.34944°N 0.45639°W
Map
	RAF Faldingworth Location in Lincolnshire
Runways

Royal Air Force Station Faldingworth or more simply RAF Faldingworth was an Royal Air Force station used during and after the Second World War. It was located close to the village of Faldingworth in Lincolnshire, England.

History[]

It was used during the war by number 300 (Polish) Squadron and a memorial is now in place to them at the end of the main runway.

Faldingworth entered service life as Toft Grange decoy airfield and later as a satellite airfield of RAF Lindholme. Late in 1943 it became a satellite of RAF Ludford Magna.After the war the base was used for storage of weapons.

In 1957 the site became a nuclear weapons store for the RAF V bomber force. In times of crisis nuclear weapons from the site would be distributed to the nearby v-bomber airfields such as RAF Scampton, RAF Finningley and RAF Coningsby. With the transfer of the UK nuclear deterrent role to the Royal Navy's Resolution class submarines in 1968 the site was run down and finally de-activated in 1972.In 1979 the entire NCO married quarter site was sold to The Welbeck Estate Group who upgraded the houses adding a communal swimming pool and renaming it The Virginia Estate. This was the first of 36 ex MOD sites to be acquired by The Welbeck Estate Group. The site was later used by The British Manufacture and Research Company as a weapons test site, Lincolnshire Police also used the site in the early 1990s to train Police Officers in riot control techniques.

Current Ordnance Survey maps show the remains of a typical wartime bomber airfield, with the former storage site overlaying the south-western part of the airfield, about 1.25 miles (2 km) east of Spridlington. There is a cluster of RAF-built housing north-east of the airfield area,sold to The Welbeck Estate Group in 1979 and a group of RAF buildings used as an industrial estate.

Operation units and aircraft[]

No. 300 Polish Bomber Squadron (1944-1947) - Vickers Wellington X, Avro Lancaster I & III
No. 305 Polish Bomber Squadron (1946-1947) - de Havilland Mosquito VI

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References[]

Citations[]

↑ Halpenny 1981, p. 00.^{[page needed]}

Bibliography[]

Halpenny, B.B. Action Stations: Wartime Military Airfields of Lincolnshire and the East Midlands v. 2. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Patrick Stephens Ltd, 1981. ISBN 0-85059-484-7.

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to RAF Faldingworth.

All or a portion of this article consists of text from Wikipedia, and is therefore Creative Commons Licensed under GFDL.
The original article can be found at RAF Faldingworth and the edit history here.

[Halpenny1981p00-1] Halpenny 1981, p. 00.^{[page needed]}

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