RAF Mildenhall

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RAF Mildenhall
Mildenhallphoto.jpg
Characteristics
ICAO code EGUN
IATA code MHZ
Coordinates

52 ° 21 '54 "  N , 0 ° 28' 51"  E Coordinates: 52 ° 21 '54 "  N , 0 ° 28' 51"  E
Height above MSL 10 m (33  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 40 km northeast of Cambridge
Street A1101
3 km to the A11
Basic data
opening October 16, 1934
operator United States Air Force
Start-and runway
11/29 2811 m concrete / asphalt



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The Royal Air Force Station Mildenhall , RAF Mildenhall for short, is a military airfield used by the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE) in the United Kingdom , between Cambridge and Thetford near Mildenhall in the county of Suffolk , East Anglia . In addition to the nearby RAF Lakenheath, the base is one of two remaining USAFE bases in England, which are still based on squadrons. Lakenheath and Mildenhall form the largest USAFE site in Great Britain, with around 4500 soldiers and 2000 civilians working in Lakenheath alone.

Mildenhall is currently the base for tankers, aircraft for special missions and electronics reconnaissance.

history

Typical flight route of RB-47Hs, around 1957
SR-71A taking off, Mildenhall 1983
MC-130 flying over, Mildenhall 1984

The idea of ​​building a bomber base near Mildenhall was born in the 1920s and after the land was acquired in 1929, the first buildings were opened two years later. RAF Mildenhall finally opened early on October 16, 1934, and the MacRobertson air race could start four days later from here. In the following year, King George V inspected 350 assembled aircraft on the occasion of his silver jubilee.

During the Second World War , the station was subordinate to the Bomber Command , here was the headquarters of the 3rd Group and the predominant bomber types were Wellington , Stirling and Lancaster . On the evening of Great Britain's declaration of war on Germany on September 3, 1939, three Wellingtons launched their first air raid on Wilhelmshaven . As a result, three satellite airfields were created in Newmarket, Tuddenham and Lakenheath. Mildenhall itself received a concrete runway in 1943. From an Allied perspective, Mildenhall's balance sheet at the end of the war was 23,000 tons of bombs dropped and 2,000 sea ​​mines laid in over 8,000 enemy flights. The station lost around 200 aircraft and over 2000 crew members.

After the war, RAF Mildenhall was initially mothballed for a few years, only to be reactivated as a forward US bomber base of the Strategic Air Command at the beginning of the Cold War from 1950 . For this purpose, entire bomber and air refueling squadrons with, for example, Superfortresses , Stratojets or Stratotankers were regularly relocated for up to 90 days to Mildenhall and also to the RAF Upper Heyford airfield located further west in Oxfordshire .

The base was subordinated to the USAFE in 1959 and in the course of the 1960s, for the first time, units with EC-135 and C-130 moved to Mildenhall, aircraft types that still characterize Mildenhall's image in newer series.

During the last decade and a half of the Cold War , the station also housed Detachment 4 of the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing of Beale AFB . Its Blackbirds regularly flew reconnaissance flights in the air traffic control zone on the inner-German border and over the Baltic Sea . Operation El Dorado Canyon in April 1986, which was supported by tankers from Mildenhall , also fell during this period .

The 352d Special Operations Group , previously stationed at RAF Alconbury , moved to Mildenhall in 1995. Until 2007, it included the 21st Special Operations Squadron (21st SOS), which flew the MH-53 , and two squadrons of C-130. The latter were in service in the form of the MC-130H until 2013 with the 7th SOS and until February 2014 as the HC / MC-130P with the 67th SOS. The first CV-22 Osprey arrived at the 7th SOS in Mildenhall in June 2013 and in the same year the replacement of the MC-130P with the MC-130J at the 67th SOS began.

Until 2003, Mildenhall also hosted the largest American air day in Europe, the "Mildenhall US Air Fete". Due to the many missions, at that time the Iraq war began, this event no longer takes place today.

In early 2015, it was announced that Mildenhall would be returned to the Royal Air Force by 2022 (later gradually postponed to 2027). The aircraft stationed here were to be relocated to Ramstein , Spangdahlem and RAF Fairford . Since the British Ministry of Defense has no further needs for the area, the airfield should be subjected to civilian conversion . However, the plans to move to Germany were discarded in mid-2020.

Todays use

The base currently (2020) hosts the following flying associations:

There are also non-flying units.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ USAF postpones RAF Mildenhall closure, Bury Free Press, September 26, 2017
  2. ↑ RAF Mildenhall airmen due to move to Germany to 'remain in the UK' Newmarket Journal, July 30, 2020