RAF Brawdy

RAF Brawdy opened in February 1944 on high ground in Pembrokeshire, some six miles east of St Davids in west Wales. It was built with an unusual three-runway layout intended to let large, fully loaded aircraft take off into whichever wind prevailed. The station came under No. 19 Group of Coastal Command, and its wartime work was chiefly maritime: long-range anti-submarine patrols over the Western Approaches and meteorological reconnaissance flights, including those flown by No. 517 Squadron with Handley Page Halifaxes.

In January 1946 the airfield passed to the Royal Navy and was commissioned as a Fleet Air Arm station, where it served for many years as a training and front-line base. A long list of naval squadrons flew from here over the following decades, operating types such as the Hawker Sea Hawk, Fairey Gannet and Hawker Hunter.

The RAF returned in the early 1970s, and Brawdy became home to No. 1 Tactical Weapons Unit, training pilots on the Hawker Hunter and later the BAE Hawk, while search-and-rescue helicopters were also based there. Flying ended in the early 1990s, and in 1995 the site was handed to the British Army and renamed Cawdor Barracks.