RAF Croughton

RAF Croughton
Characteristics
Coordinates	51 ° 59 '15 "  N , 1 ° 11' 10"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 59 '15 "  N , 1 ° 11' 10"  W.
Height above MSL	137 m (449  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	3 miles southwest of Brackley
Street	5 km to the
Basic data
opening	1938
operator	United States Air Force

The Royal Air Force Station Croughton , RAF Croughton for short , is a military airfield used by the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) in the United Kingdom , southeast of Croughton between Brackley and Bicester in the county of Northamptonshire , East Midlands . Flight operations no longer take place here, the base serves in particular as a communication base. It presumably also serves the American NSA as an important node in its foreign intelligence.

history

RAF Croughton opened as Brackley Landing Ground in 1938 and was renamed RAF Brackley and eventually RAF Croughton in 1940. The airfield, equipped with three grass runways, served the neighboring RAF Upper Heyford station between summer 1940 and summer 1942 as a satellite airfield for the training of crews of the RAF Bomber Command . After a nine-month stay at a glider school, the base was again used for training crews of multi-engine aircraft as an outside area of RAF Kidlington until autumn 1944 . It was then used again for glider training. Use by the RAF ended in May 1946.

In 1950, the American Air Force took over RAF Croughton and has been using the area for communication ever since. The American secret services such as the NSA also use the communication infrastructure to forward their data to the USA, presumably until 2011 also the overheard cell phone calls of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel .

Web links

Commons : RAF Croughton  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• 422nd Air Base Group