RAF Honington

RAF Honington lies in the flat country of west Suffolk, six miles south of Thetford near the village of Ixworth, on land turned over to the Air Ministry under the late-1930s Expansion Scheme. Construction began in 1935 and the station opened on 3 May 1937, its first residents being No. 77 Squadron with Hawker Harts and Vickers Wellesleys and No. 102 Squadron with Handley Page Heyford biplanes — aircraft already obsolescent by the time their hangars were finished. Within two years the Heyfords had given way to Wellingtons, and Honington had been folded into 3 Group of Bomber Command.

The station saw action from the war’s opening hours. On 4 September 1939, the day after Britain declared war, IX Squadron flew out of Honington to attack German warships in the Schillig Roads — the RAF’s first bombing raid of the Second World War. Two of its Wellingtons did not come back. Bomber Command operations continued from Honington until 1942, when the airfield was handed to the United States Army Air Forces and re-designated Station 375. American engineers turned it into the 1st Strategic Air Depot, a repair hub for battle-damaged B-17 Flying Fortresses pulled out of the Eighth Air Force’s bases across East Anglia. From February 1944 the 364th Fighter Group also operated from Honington, escorting heavy bombers first in P-38 Lightnings and then, from that summer, in P-51 Mustangs.

The Americans handed Honington back in 1946 and the station settled into the long Cold War. In 1956 it joined the V-force, hosting Vickers Valiants of Nos. 7, 90 and 199 Squadrons and Handley Page Victors of Nos. 55 and 57. Strike Command’s Blackburn Buccaneers replaced the V-bombers from November 1969, flown by Nos. 12, 15 and 16 Squadrons in the maritime and conventional strike roles. Panavia Tornado GR1s arrived at the start of the 1980s; IX(B) Squadron reformed at Honington in August 1982 as the world’s first operational Tornado squadron, and the station remained a Tornado strike base through the Gulf War.

The flying era ended on 15 July 1992, when the Ministry of Defence announced that the Tornado wing would disperse and Honington would become the depot of the RAF Regiment. It has held that role ever since, training every RAF gunner, housing the headquarters of RAF Force Protection, and serving as the home station of an arm of the service whose job is to defend airfields and personnel rather than fly from them.