Royal Air Force Bruntingthorpe or more simply RAF Bruntingthorpe is a former Royal Air Force station located north east of Lutterworth, Leicestershire and south of Leicester, Leicestershire, England.
It was operational between 1942 and 1962 and it is currently known as Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome.
History
Royal Air Force use
The station was opened in November 1942 as the home of No. 29 Operational Training Unit RAF operating the Vickers Wellington.
After the Second World War ended, the airfield was used to test Gloster Meteor jet fighters by the Power Jets Unit. It was placed into RAF care and maintenance status and remained unused until January 1957.
The following units were also here at some point:
In 1955, a massive reconstruction plan was approved to transform the airfield and station into a Strategic Air Command (SAC) bomber base. The USAF planned to use Bruntingthorpe as an advanced Operation Reflex base for forward deployment of the new Boeing B-47 Stratojet medium range nuclear bomber. SAC wanted to disperse its nuclear bomber force and have about half of its B-47s stationed at forward bases in Western Europe and North Africa. Because the borders of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact controlled areas were within the range of the B-47, the Reflex deployments would base the bombers for 90-day rotations of crews and aircraft. The first operational use of the base began in March 1958 when 43 B-47s of the 100th Bombardment Wing deployed from Pease AFB, New Hampshire arrived over a three-day period. The squadron participated in operational training missions until returning to the United States in November. The 96th Bombardment Wing from Dyess AFB, Texas, deployed its B-47s during the summer of 1959.
Following French President General de Gaulle's requirement for all foreign nuclear forces to leave France, there was a major readjustment of USAF deployments in Western Europe, and the B-47 deployments ended. On 1 September 1959, jurisdiction of Bruntingthorpe was transferred from SAC to the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) and control of the facility was assigned to the 10th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing at RAF Alconbury, which had been moved from West Germany to England. The 10th TRW could not accommodate all four squadrons of the wing at Alconbury, so one was based at Bruntingthorpe, which became its satellite. The mission was changed to support Douglas RB-66B Destroyer Reconnaissance aircraft of the 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. The first B-66s arrived at the base on 26 August and by mid-September 18 were present. The squadron's activities consisted of taking high-resolution aerial photographs of Soviet and Warsaw Pact military forces and activities.