RAF Barford St John

RAF Barford St John opened in 1941 in rural Oxfordshire, a few miles south of Banbury, and spent most of its wartime existence as a satellite landing ground supporting the larger training stations nearby. Its grass surface was given paved runways in 1942, and the airfield was used principally for instruction rather than front-line operations. Among the units that passed through were No. 15 Service Flying Training School, flying Airspeed Oxfords, and No. 16 Operational Training Unit with Vickers Wellingtons, which prepared crews for Bomber Command; later a Mosquito training role and a glider conversion unit also made use of the site.

The station’s most significant chapter, however, was experimental. In 1943 Barford St John became a flight-test base for Britain’s first jet aircraft, hosting trials of the pioneering Gloster E.28/39 and the early Gloster Meteor, work associated with the Gloster Aircraft Company before testing moved on to a hardened runway elsewhere.

Flying ceased in late 1945 and the RAF wound the station down soon after the war. It did not return to civil aviation: in 1951 the United States Air Force established a communications and transmitter facility on the site. The airfield remains in military hands today as a non-flying USAF communications station, distinguished by its large aerial arrays and operated as a satellite of RAF Croughton.