RAF Cottesmore

RAF Cottesmore opened on 11 March 1938 in Rutland, between the villages of Cottesmore and Market Overton, as one of the bomber stations built during the late-1930s expansion of the Royal Air Force. On the outbreak of the Second World War it formed part of Bomber Command’s No. 5 Group, hosting No. 106 and No. 185 Squadrons flying the Handley Page Hampden.

For much of the war the station’s main task was training rather than front-line operations. No. 14 Operational Training Unit was based there, preparing crews on Hampdens, Herefords and Vickers Wellingtons, and the airfield passed through No. 6 (Training) and No. 92 (OTU) Groups. From May 1943 a Heavy Glider Maintenance Section operated there, and in February 1944 the United States Army Air Forces took over the field as Station 489, basing the 316th Troop Carrier Group with its Douglas C-47 and C-53 transports for the airborne landings that followed.

After the war Cottesmore went on to a long Cold War career, serving as a V-bomber base for Victors and Vulcans, then the Tri-National Tornado Training Establishment, and finally Joint Force Harrier units until the RAF ceremony of closure on 31 March 2011. The site was handed to the British Army and reopened in 2012 as Kendrew Barracks.