RAF Warboys
RAF Warboys
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Summary | |||||||||||||||||||
| Airport type | Military | ||||||||||||||||||
| Owner | Air Ministry | ||||||||||||||||||
| Operator | Royal Air Force | ||||||||||||||||||
| Location | Warboys, Cambridgeshire | ||||||||||||||||||
| Built | 1940 | ||||||||||||||||||
| In use | 1940-1963 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 52°23′28″N 000°05′59″W / 52.39111°N 0.09972°W | ||||||||||||||||||
| Map | |||||||||||||||||||
 RAF Warboys
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| Runways | |||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||
RAF Warboys is a former Royal Air Force heavy bomber station, situated just outside the village of Warboys in Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire).
During the early years of the war, Warboys was a relatively conventional bomber station which was supplemented with the addition of an exceptionally long main runway measuring 6,290 feet. Construction of this runway resulted in the closure of the nearby road to Huntingdon (Church Road) during the war years, necessitating the construction of a bypass road, still in use (2015) as part of the A141. The extension to the runway is still clearly visible, on Google Earth, as crop marks between the old and new roads.
The station was allocated to No.3 Group in August 1942. RAF Warboys became one of the original Pathfinder Force stations.
The construction of Warboys began in 1940. The airfield was built to relieve the congestion at RAF Upwood for the use of No. 17 Operational Training Unit (No. 17 OTU) with Bristol Blenheims. The completion of barbed wire around strategic areas, and three AA gun positions with one Vickers gun, were almost finished by 17 May.
The airfield was ready to use at the end of July 1941, and the first squadron to arrive was a detachment of Short Stirlings from 15 Squadron, arriving from RAF Wyton. The next unit to arrive was 'D' Flight 17 OTU which was based at RAF Upwood and came to Warboys on 15 December. 15 squadron left two days before 17 OTU arrived. The completion of the domestic sites and the new officers' mess and Sergeants' mess were in use about this time. The bad weather held up completion of a lot of the buildings including the Battle Headquarters.
The first fully operational squadron to arrive at Warboys was 156 Squadron on 5 August 1942. The squadron came from RAF Alconbury with Vickers Wellingtons; in the new year it re-equipped with Avro Lancasters. The first RAF unit at Warboys was No. 1507 Beam Approach Training for the RAF Bomber Command, equipped with Airspeed Oxfords, but was only at Warboys from 13 March to 17 June 1943. After 1507 (BAT) left, the Stirlings, Lancasters, Handley Page Halifaxes and Oxfords of the Pathfinder Force Navigation Training Unit arrived from RAF Gransden Lodge.
...
Wikipedia