RAF Coltishall

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RAF Coltishall was a Royal Air Force station near Norwich in East Anglia England. The Ministry of Defence, in the Delivering Security in a Changing World review, announced that the station would close by December 2006. The future of the station was sealed once the Ministry of Defence announced that the Typhoon, the Jaguar's replacement, would not be based there. The last of the Jaguar squadrons left on 1 April 2006 and the station finally closed, one month early and £10 million under budget, on 30 November 2006.

The station motto was Aggressive in defence. The badge is a stone tower surmounted by a mailed fist grasping three arrows.

Contents

[edit] History

Work on RAF Coltishall was started in 1938. The airfield was built at land near Scottow Hall. The station would have been named after the nearest railway station, which would have made it "RAF Buxton", but to avoid possible confusion with Buxton, Derbyshire, it was named after Coltishall instead. The airfield was completed and entered service in May 1940 as a fighter base. It later became home to night fighters. At the same time the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm operated aircraft from RAF Coltishall over the North Sea. At the end of the war Coltishall was briefly given over to Polish squadrons until they returned home.

Postwar the station was home to a variety of units and aircraft including Mosquitos, Javelins, Lightnings and - from 1963 - the Historic Aircraft Flight (now known as the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight). The last Lightnings left Coltishall in 1974 and were replaced by the Anglo-French SEPECAT Jaguar, with the first Jaguar squadron being No. 54 Squadron RAF.

The station was exclusively a Jaguar station from then on, and some of the station's Jags participated in the 1991 Gulf War and in operations over Bosnia and then later Iraq once more.

With the arrival of the Eurofighter Typhoon, the gradual retirement of the Jaguar began. Coltishall was not chosen as a future Typhoon base, and so the station was also earmarked for closure. The first two Jaguar squadrons to disband, No. 16 Squadron RAF and No. 54 Squadron RAF, did so on 11 March 2005. The final Jaquar squadrons departed on 1 April 2006, when No. 41 Squadron RAF was disbanded and No. 6 Squadron RAF transferred to RAF Coningsby. The final front line RAF movement from the station was by Jaguar XZ112, piloted by Jim Luke, on 3 April 2006.

Some limited flying from light aircraft including those of the Coltishall Flying Club did continue after the end of RAF flying operations, until October 2006. While 1 April 2006 saw the disbandment parade for the station, it did not actually disband and finally close until 30 November 2006. Associated facilities such as the Douglas Bader Primary School have also closed. The final day of the station saw the gates being opened to the public - anybody with photographic ID was welcomed onto the station to have a look around and view the final closing ceremony, which saw a flypast by a Hawker Hurricane and four Jaguars.

The station was briefly handed over to Defence Estates who were to handle the disposal of the site, but the Home Office stepped in during January 2007 and in early February earmarked the site for use as an immigration detention facility.

[edit] Coltishall aircraft

Some 40 plus different aircraft have been operated out of Coltishall at some point in its history, among these:

operated by Detachments from other squadrons

Air/sea Rescue squadron detachments

operated by Fleet Air Arm

As home to the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, a sole Avro Lancaster bomber operated out of Coltishall post war

[edit] Coltishall Squadrons

[edit] Former Squadrons

[edit] See also

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