RAF Cluntoe

RAF Cluntoe stood on the western shore of Lough Neagh, about a mile west of Ardboe in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Construction began in December 1940 but dragged on until July 1942. Although the site had been laid out with an operational training unit in mind, when it first came into use the Royal Air Force employed it only as an emergency landing ground, and it saw little activity during this early period.

The airfield’s most intensive chapter began on 30 August 1943, when it passed to the United States Army Air Force and became Station 238. From November 1943 it housed No. 4 Combat Crew Replacement Center, where freshly arrived American airmen were worked up for heavy-bomber operations on the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, with Consolidated B-24 Liberators added early in 1944. Training reached its height in the summer of 1944 alongside the wider Allied bombing offensive, and the influx of several thousand US personnel transformed the small rural parish around it.

The Americans departed and Station 238 closed in November 1944, after which Cluntoe reverted to the RAF and wound down. The site was refurbished and briefly reopened in 1953 as a satellite for No. 2 Flying Training School, turning out pilots during the Korean War era before closing for good in the mid-1950s. Part of the former station is today occupied by Ardboe Business Park, while runways, the control tower and other wartime structures survive in agricultural use.