RAF Coltishall

RAF Coltishall lay in Norfolk, around ten miles north-north-east of Norwich, and was an active station from the early summer of 1940 until its closure on 30 November 2006 — one of the longest unbroken operational careers of any RAF airfield. Conceived initially as a bomber base, it instead spent the Second World War as a fighter station under Fighter Command’s No. 12 Group, defending East Anglia and the approaches to the Midlands and the north.

During the Battle of Britain period the airfield was best known as the home of No. 242 Squadron, the Hurricane unit led by the legless fighter pilot Douglas Bader, whose tenure became part of the station’s lasting reputation. A wide range of fighter, night-fighter, reconnaissance and air-sea rescue units passed through during the war, including Polish and Czechoslovak squadrons formed within the RAF, reflecting Coltishall’s busy role across the eastern coastal sector. The wartime fighter ace Robert Stanford Tuck later commanded the station in the late 1940s.

In the post-war jet age Coltishall flew aircraft such as the English Electric Lightning and, for over three decades, the SEPECAT Jaguar, from which detachments deployed on operations in the Gulf, over Iraq and the Balkans. After closure the site was sold to Norfolk County Council and redeveloped for a prison, an enterprise park, housing and a solar farm, with a heritage centre preserving its history.