RAF Lossiemouth

Royal Air Force Station Lossiemouth Royal Naval Air Station Lossiemouth
Characteristics
ICAO code	EGQS
IATA code	LMO
Coordinates	57 ° 42 '19 "  N , 3 ° 20' 21"  W Coordinates: 57 ° 42 '19 "  N , 3 ° 20' 21"  W.
Height above MSL	13 m (43  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	3 miles north of Elgin
Street	5 km to the
Basic data
opening	May 1, 1939
operator	Royal Air Force
Runways
05/23	2749 m of asphalt
10/28	1849 m of asphalt

The Royal Air Force Station Lossiemouth , RAF Lossiemouth for short , is a military airfield of the British Royal Air Force west of Lossiemouth in the county of Moray , Scotland . The base is one of the largest in the RAF and in addition RAF Coningsby one of the two bases of the Euro Typhoon with four seasons (engl. Squadrons ).

In 1944, the bombers of the 9th and 617th Squadron started their attack against the battleship Tirpitz of the German navy, which was lying in a northern Norwegian fjord . The 617th was here again later, equipped with tornadoes , and currently the 9th Squadron is stationed here again, this time with Typhoons. After the war, this was the cradle of the naval aviators of the German Navy .

In the future, here nine Boeing P-8 - maritime patrol and anti-submarine airplanes are stationed.

history

In the course of the upgrading in the run-up to the Second World War , construction began in 1938 and flight operations began in RAF Lossiemouth in 1939 before the outbreak of war. The place was initially a training ground.

On April 9, 1940, the Wehrmacht began to occupy Denmark and Norway ( Operation Weser Exercise ) and the RAF Bomber Command took over the station in the same month .

On 12 November 1944 29 modified launched on the basis Lossiemouth Lancaster bombers of the 9th and 617th Squadron towards Norway for "Operation Catechism" - the ninth and last British attack on the battleship Tirpitz . Each machine had a single Tallboy bomb. The Tirpitz was located from a distance of twenty nautical miles, and at a distance of thirteen nautical miles the bombers began to be bombarded by German flak. A Lancaster was damaged and had to make an emergency landing in neutral Sweden. The other machines dropped their bombs. After three full hits and several close hits, the Tirpitz capsized within ten minutes.

Tornado of No. 617 Sqn in Iraq , 2007

After the Second World War, after a one-year interlude , the field was handed over to the Royal Navy (RN) as a station of the RAF Coastal Command in 1946 , the Royal Naval Air Station Lossiemouth was henceforth known as HMS Fulmar and supported the training of future aircraft carrier pilots of the Fleet Air Arm .

In 1958, the 1st multi-purpose squadron of the German Navy was put into service on the basis . This squadron was moved later in the year to Jagel in Schleswig-Holstein, where it was in service as Naval Aviation Squadron 1 of the German Navy until the end of 1993 .

In 1967 Buccaneer naval deep attack bombers were used in the wreck of the super tanker Torrey Canyon . In the run-up to the decommissioning of their conventional aircraft carriers , the Royal Navy returned the Lossiemouth station to the Royal Air Force on September 28, 1972.

In addition to the fighter jets, some Sea King rescue helicopters were stationed here from 1978 onwards , which were operated by the 'D' Flight of the 202nd Squadron . The helicopters were used, among other things, in the Piper Alpha oil rig accident in 1988 and the Pan-Am crash over Lockerbie in the same year. As a result of the privatization of British air rescue, the unit left the station after 40 years in early April 2015.

During the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, the majority of the Buccaneers who had also been handed over to the RAF were stationed in RAF Lossiemouth, including the retraining unit . The machines were still, now land-based, when naval fighter-bombers were used. At the same time, the base housed the retraining unit for the Jaguar fighter-bombers, which was on the site until 2000.

With the decommissioning of the Buccaneers, the base became home to Tornado squadrons, which were previously stationed in England , but also in Germany at the RAF Germany . The squadrons include the 12th (bomber) and 15th (reserve) , the Tornado retraining unit, as well as the famous 617th "Dambuster" Squadron .

After 1990, machines from Lossie were used in various operations in the Middle East and over the Balkans, from the Gulf War in 1991 to the civil war in Libya in 2011 .

The No. 140 Expeditionary Air Wing (EAW) was set up on April 1, 2006 in Lossiemouth. None of the flying squadrons belong to the EAW. The base commander is also the EAW commander. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York is Colonel of Honor of RAF Lossiemouth.

The two Tornado GR.4 squadrons were decommissioned on March 28, 2014 and in June of that year the first Typhoons of the 6th Squadron from Leuchars (see below) arrived, followed by the 1st Squadron in early September 2014. In January 2015 a third season was added with the 2nd Squadron . The Tornado retraining unit, the 15th squadron, was finally decommissioned at the end of March 2017 before the Typhoon Force, the 9th Squadron , received its target size on April 1, 2019 .

Usage today and in the future

The base currently (2019) houses four RAF flying squadrons:

• 1st , 2nd , 6th and 9th Squadron , Typhoon Task Force, since June 2014

The publication of a new white paper by the UK government in 2015 leads to an expansion of the base. In addition to a fourth Typhoon Season the Scottish base base of the 2,016 ordered is Poseidon - maritime patrol aircraft . For this purpose, the 120th and 201st Squadron deactivated in the nearby Kinloss in 2011 will be reorganized in 2018 and 2021 respectively. The construction of the infrastructure for the P-8 began in April 2018. The Swiss Air Force carried out night flight training from 2017 onwards in November.

Others

RAF Lossiemouth has been the only remaining RAF flying station in Scotland since mid-2014 and since then has been the RAF's second Typhoon base instead of RAF Leuchars (see below).

Kinloss Relief Landing Ground

The former Royal Air Force Station Kinloss , about 15 km west-southwest, is now an army base, the Kinloss Barracks . The runway in Kinloss serves Lossiemouth as an alternative runway, the personnel stationed in Kinloss are subordinate to RAF Lossiemouth. Due to a renovation of the runway in "Lossie" in 2019/2020, the first of the P-8A arriving from 2020 will operate from Kinloss.

Leuchar's station

Another airfield was the Royal Air Force Station Leuchars further south near Leuchars . This station was handed over to the army at the end of March 2015. Leuchars Station , as it is today, is intended as the new home of former BFG units such as the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards from Fallingbostel . The last two Typhoon squadrons, which were moved to Lossiemouth in 2014, were stationed there. Leuchars served the British armed forces as a military airfield for more than 100 years. From September 1969, Leuchars was, among other things, the first RAF base for the Phantom FG.1 .

Due to a renovation of the runway in "Lossie" in 2019/2020, Leuchars will be temporarily reactivated for the Typhoon alarm.

Milltown Airfield

The former Royal Air Force Station Milltown , now known as Milltown Airfield , is about eight km southeast of RAF Lossiemouth. It was built in 1943 during the Second World War as a training area for the bomber crews stationed in Lossiemouth and in the last year of the war, the 224th Squadron was also an operational unit of the RAF Coastal Command .

Together with Lossiemouth, Milltown was taken over by the Navy in 1946. The Royal Navy referred to the field from then on as HMS Fulmar II and used it for training aircraft carrier landings .

The flight operations were discontinued in 1977 and Milltown was subsequently developed into a radio station for the RAF. Although the messaging function has now been transferred to a civil service provider, the area is still owned by the Ministry of Defense , which partly leases it to farmers as grazing land.

See also

• List of Royal Air Force bases

Web links

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

• official homepage
• Homepage of the Leuchars Station

Individual evidence

1. ↑ End of an era as last Sea King rescue helicopter leaves Lossiemouth, Scottish Television (deputy), April 7, 2015
2. ↑ End of an era for RAF Lossiemouth Tornados, RAF News, March 22, 2016 ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ RAF announces new Typhoon, Protector squadrons, Janes, July 12, 2018
4. ^ MoD reveals plans for major RAF Lossiemouth revamp, STV News, October 19, 2016
5. ↑ Defense secretary announces new maritime patrol aircraft squadrons, MOD Homepage, July 13, 2017  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Defense Secretary launches £ 132m Scots sub-hunting aircraft home, MOD Homepage, April 19, 2018
7. ↑ F / A-18 flying in Scotland , NZZ , October 25, 2017
8. ↑ Defense Secretary launches £ 132m Scots sub-hunting aircraft home, MOD Homepage, April 19, 2018
9. ↑ "Quote: ... temporarily re-activate the airfield in Leuchars in Fife to accommodate the quick reaction alert ...", Janes, September 14, 2018