RAF Boscombe Down

RAF Boscombe Down lies on the chalk downland of Wiltshire, near Amesbury, and is one of the longest-serving aviation sites in Britain. It first opened on 1 October 1917 as a training depot station for the Royal Flying Corps, was closed and returned to farmland in 1920, then reopened in 1930 as a permanent RAF station. Through the 1930s it housed operational squadrons flying types such as the Vickers Virginia, Handley Page Heyford, Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, Hawker Hind and Fairey Battle.

The defining change came in September 1939, when the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment (A&AEE) moved to Boscombe Down from Martlesham Heath. From then on the station’s central purpose was the testing and evaluation of military aircraft and their weapons rather than front-line operations, a role it has retained ever since. In 1943 the Empire Test Pilots’ School was established there to train test pilots.

In the post-war decades the airfield became closely linked with British prototype development, including early flying of types such as the English Electric P.1, the Hawker Hunter, the Folland Gnat and the BAC TSR-2. The site remains an active aircraft test and evaluation centre, operated since 2001 by the defence company QinetiQ with continued RAF use.