RAF Faldingworth

RAF Faldingworth was a wartime bomber airfield in Lincolnshire, opened in 1943. It began life as a satellite station, first to RAF Lindholme and later to RAF Ludford Magna, and came under No. 1 Group of RAF Bomber Command. Like much of the county, it sat at the heart of the bomber offensive flown against occupied Europe.

The station is most closely associated with the Polish airmen of the RAF. No. 300 (Polish) Squadron flew from Faldingworth from 1944, operating Vickers Wellingtons before converting to the Avro Lancaster for night raids over Germany. After the war No. 305 (Polish) Squadron also passed through, briefly flying de Havilland Mosquitoes. Training and support formations used the site too, among them No. 1667 Heavy Conversion Unit and No. 1 Lancaster Finishing School, which prepared crews for the heavy bombers.

Faldingworth’s later history was unusual. From the late 1950s it was developed as a high-security storage depot for the nuclear weapons of the V-bomber force, a role it held into the 1960s before the deterrent passed to the Royal Navy. The airfield was finally given up around 1972. Today little flying infrastructure survives, the wartime quarters having been turned over to housing and the remaining buildings to industrial and agricultural use.