No. 82 Squadron

No. 82 Operational Training Unit was formed on 1 June 1943 at RAF Ossington, Nottinghamshire, within No. 93 Group, RAF Bomber Command, drawing its initial cadre from an element of No. 28 OTU. Its purpose was to prepare night bomber crews for front-line operations, principally on the Vickers Wellington Mk.III and Mk.X, with Miles Martinets employed as target tugs to give air gunners live firing practice. RAF Gamston served as a satellite airfield for the unit, and the two stations together hosted a considerable throughput of aircrew from across the Commonwealth during the peak years of the strategic bombing campaign. In June 1944 the establishment was reduced to three-quarter strength, and that same month an element of 82 OTU was detached to form the newly constituted No. 86 OTU at Gamston. The unit carried no national or county honorific. No. 82 OTU was disbanded on 9 January 1945, by which point the Bomber Command expansion programme that had driven its creation was winding down ahead of the end of the war in Europe.