RAF Honington

RAF Honington
Characteristics
ICAO code	EGXH
IATA code	BEQ
Coordinates	52 ° 20 ′ 33 "  N , 0 ° 46 ′ 23"  W Coordinates: 52 ° 20 ′ 33 "  N , 0 ° 46 ′ 23"  W
Height above MSL	53 m (174  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	10 km southeast of Thetford
Street	between and
Basic data
opening	May 3, 1937
operator	Royal Air Force
Start-and runway
09/27	2747 m × 61 m asphalt

The Royal Air Force Station Honington, RAF Honington for short , is a base of the British Royal Air Force that was formerly used as a military airfield . It is located northwest of Honington in the county of Suffolk , England .

Honington is the main base of the RAF regiment, the ground-based security forces of the RAF and the RAF police.

The RAF regiment has been sponsoring the Air Force property protection regiment in Schortens since 2008 .

history

The airfield was opened for RAF Bomber Command in the run-up to World War II in 1937 and was used by various bomber squadrons and a number of different types of aircraft in the following period. This also included the 311st (Czech) Squadron between 1940 and 1942 . During the Battle of Britain , Honington was attacked by the German Air Force at least 16 times , with a number of casualties.

In late 1942, the station was handed over to the Eighth Air Force of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), which used it as a repair shop for B-17s . The base has been extended in a row in February 1944 home of with first P-38 and from the summer of 1944, P-51 equipped 364th Fighter Group (364th FG) whose tasks both escort for heavy bombers in their Tagangriffen to the German Reich as also included fighter-bomber missions in support of the Allied ground forces. Honington was the last operational base of the war, only being returned by the USAAF to the RAF in February 1946 after the 364th FG left the base in November 1945.

For the next four years, the station housed associations of the RAF Transport Command that waited for transport aircraft deployed on the Berlin Airlift . In the following years Honington was initially still used as a maintenance base and from 1955 served again as a base for airborne units.

Initially, there were four squadrons of Canberra bombers that flew combat missions in the context of the Suez crisis the following year , and between 1956 and 1966 Honington was the base for three squadrons of Valiant V bombers , one of which was the 199th Squadron , but as early as 1958 was relocated. In addition, there were two Victor squadrons in 1959 and 1960 , the 55th and 57th Squadron . A new, large east-west runway was built for the V bombers. One of the Valiant squadrons, the 90th Squadron , was used for air refueling from the early 1960s and the other, the 7th Squadron , was decommissioned in 1962. The same fate befell the 90th squadron in 1965. The two Victor squadrons relocated to RAF Marham in the same year , as Honington was to be temporarily closed in 1996 in preparation for the planned arrival of the F-111 .

After the procurement of the F-111 had failed, the field became the base of the RAF Buccaneer from 1969 and from 1972 until its dissolution in 1978 the 809th Naval Air Sqaudron of the Royal Navy , the last Buccaneer squadron of the Fleet Air Arms . The last RAF Buccaneers left Honington in 1984.

In the meantime, between 1971 and 1972, the Shackletons of the 204th Squadron , who were deployed in the search and rescue role, were also lying here .

Honington became the second British tornado base after RAF Cottesmore . From 1981, the weapons system training took place here at the Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit (TWCU), which was renamed the 45th (Reserve) Squadron in 1984 . With the 9th a temporary squadron was added from 1982 to 1986, but this then moved to the RAF Germany in Brüggen , and in 1990 the 13th squadron was re-established as a tornado reconnaissance squadron in Honington.

After the end of the Cold War , the station's mission changed. In particular, it was supposed to become the main base of the RAF regiment, of which a first Rapier anti-aircraft missile squadron had been in Honington since 1985. The two Tornado squadrons consequently left the base in 1993/1994 in the direction of RAF Lossiemouth and RAF Marham and regular flight operations in Honington ceased in March 1994.

Following the handover of the facility to the RAF Regiment in the summer of 1994, Honington became a number of other units of the RAF Regiment as well as other parts of the RAF. The aviation use is limited today to RAF motor glider Vigilant T.1 .

Incidents

• On 19 December 1946 a began Avro York C.1 of the Royal Air Force ( Air vehicle registration MW241 ) on the air base RAF Honington fire, were drained as the fuel tanks. The plane was destroyed.

Trivia

In Frederick Forsyth's novel " The Fourth Protocol ", RAF Honington was the scene of a demonstration against the stationing of American cruise missiles as a result of the NATO double resolution . The contemporary model was the RAF Greenham Common base .

Web links

Commons : RAF Honington  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official Homepage (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ "umbrella documents" renewed for long-term cooperation. Air Force News, October 8, 2019
2. ↑ accident report Avro York MW241 , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on February 18 2020th