RAF Brize Norton

RAF Brize Norton opened in 1937 near the village of the same name in Oxfordshire, and unlike most Bomber Command stations it spent the early war years as a training establishment. It hosted No. 2 Flying Training School, whose pupils flew the twin-engined Airspeed Oxford, while No. 110 Squadron operated Bristol Blenheim light bombers from the field for a period. The grass airfield was later given hard runways as its role broadened.

The station’s most distinctive wartime contribution lay in airborne operations. It became a centre for glider conversion, where the Heavy Glider Conversion Unit trained crews on the Airspeed Horsa towed behind Armstrong Whitworth Whitley aircraft. From 1944 Nos. 296 and 297 Squadrons, equipped with the Armstrong Whitworth Albemarle, flew from Brize Norton in support of the D-Day landings in Normandy and the airborne assault at Arnhem during Operation Market Garden, carrying paratroops and towing assault gliders.

After the war the station took on a long Cold War role, including a lengthy period of use by the United States Air Force’s strategic bomber forces during the 1950s and 1960s, for which the runway was greatly extended. It later developed into the RAF’s principal transport and air mobility hub. Brize Norton remains an active station today, operating large transport and air-to-air refuelling aircraft and serving as the main point of embarkation for British forces.