RAF Cottesmore is a Royal Air Force station in Rutland
, England
, situated
between Cottesmore
and Market Overton
. The station houses all the operational
Harrier GR7 squadrons in the
Royal Air Force, and
No 122 Expeditionary Air
Wing.
Station crest
The badge of RAF Cottesmore consists of a
hunting horn, a
five-pointed star and a
horseshoe. The description is "in front of a
horseshoe a
mullet overall a
hunting horn
in bend".
The hunting horn
symbolises the location in foxhunting country and the link with the
Cottesmore Hunt; the American Star
recalls the time the Station was United States Army Air Force base;
the inverted horseshoe is a traditional emblem of Oakham
and the
County of Rutland.
The motto "We rise to our obstacles" is both a reference to the
Cottesmore Hunt and is intended to convey the spirit with which the
Royal Air Force confronts difficulties. The badge was granted in
1948.
Origins
In 1935 the
Air Ministry became
interested in building an RAF Air Station in this largely pastoral
area of England. The threat of
Nazi
Germany had spurred the British government to take some steps
towards re-armament and to expand the
Royal Air Force. More aerodromes were
required.
A site was earmarked south of Thistleton
, to the east of Market Overton and north of Cottesmore village, where sloped gently east towards the
A1
highway
. Work commenced the following year on
removing hedges and building a permanent camp.
As with most military airfields of the period, the flying area was
required to be a grassy, circular field with a diameter of Four
C-type hangars were erected on the Cottesmore edge of the circle
and behind them lay the technical site and administrative
buildings, backed still further by barracks. The layout was typical
of the new military airfields of the expansion years.
Prewar RAF Use
RAF Cottesmore opened on 11 March 1938. The station was used mainly
for training, and the first squadrons were equipped with
Vickers Wellesley aircraft, but soon
converted to
Fairey Battles. Later
RAF Bomber Command took over the
airfield, again as a training station, flying
Handley Page Hampdens.
These units remained in residence until a few days before the
outbreak of war in 1939 when they were sent to RAF Cranfield to
serve as a pool providing replacements for combat losses. Their
place at Cottesmore was taken by Nos.
106 and 185 Squadrons,
moving in from RAF
Thornaby
with
Hampdens.
Early Wartime Use
However, with the outbreak of war, the aircraft and crews were sent
to locations in the north and west, as enemy air attacks were
expected over the southern half of England. As these never
materialised, the Hampdens returned in the spring of 1940 and No.
185 Squadron became the Hampden operational training unit, No. 14
OTU.
Cottesmore's Hampdens' first trespass into
hostile airspace was a leaflet dropping operation over northern
France
. In October 1940, No. 106 Squadron moved to
RAF Finningley while No. 14 OTU remained training crews for Bomber
Command, its Hampdens and
HP.53
Herefords being replaced by
Vickers Wellingtons in 1942. Training
continued for three years and three months until August 1943 when
No. 14 OTU moved to RAF Market Harborough.
USAAF Use
On 8 September 1943 the
United States Army Air Forces
took the facilities over, under the designation USAAF Station 489,
flying troop transport aircraft. In anticipation of the station's
future use by
airborne forces, 32
Horsa gliders were delivered for storage in July 1943.
The station was officially closed on 10 August and runway
construction commenced shortly thereafter to bring the landing area
up to Class A standard. The site was enlarged and three concrete
runways laid, the main aligned 04-22 and the two auxiliaries
aligned 09-27 and at 01-19. Additional aircraft standings, also in
concrete, raised the total to 52 of which 17 were the earlier
tarmac structures. The access tracks to several of these crossed
former public roads. A fifth hangar, a T-2, was built for the
gliders. Additional accommodation, mostly in the form of Nissen
huts, was erected by Constable. Hart & Company on the
Cottesmore village side of the airfield so that 2,338 personnel
could be housed.
Headquarters IX Troop Carrier Command
The
USAAF Ninth Air
Force, with a mission to support the ground forces, was about
to be re-deployed to the UK and
IX Troop Carrier Command was
established immediately at Cottesmore after this became effective
on 16 October 1943.
The IX Troop Carrier Command was basically a
re-designation of the existing headquarters at the station until
facilities at Grantham
were ready.
Early in February 1944, the USAAF began movement of the 52nd Troop
Carrier Wing and its groups from
Sicily to
the Grantham area, the wing headquarters reaching Cottesmore on the
17th.
This
HQ soon transferred to nearby Exton Hall
, a mansion surrounded by parkland.
IX Troop Carrier Pathfinder Group (Provisional)
Pathfinders were a group of volunteer parachutists selected within
the airborne units who were specially trained to operate
navigation aids to guide the main airborne body
to the
drop zones. The pathfinder teams
dropped approximately thirty minutes before the main body in order
to locate designated drop zones and provide
radio and visual guides for the main force in order to
improve the accuracy of the jump. Once the main body jumped, the
pathfinders then joined their original units and fought as standard
airborne infantry.
The
nucleus of a Douglas C-47-equipped
Pathfinder training unit was born at Cottesmore on 28 February
1944, with the unit moving to the newly-built RAF North
Witham
in March due to facility overcrowding.
316th Troop Carrier Group
The
316th Troop Carrier Group began to
arrive at Cottesmore on 15 February 1944 when 52 C-47 and C-53
transports began flying in from Borizzo Afld.,
Sicily. Operational squadrons and fuselage codes of
the group were:
The 316th TCG was part of the 52nd Troop Carrier Wing.
The 316th, was a unit of Ninth Air Force in the
Mediterranean Theater of
Operations (MTO) and had participated in airborne operations
during the invasion of Sicily as well as transported cargo in the
North African Campaign. The
ground echelon of the group, having had to travel by sea, did not
arrive until a month later.
The mission of the 316th TCG at Cottesmore was to prepare
for the invasion of France. Intensive
training began from the newly-completed runways. Squadron strength
was increased to 16 aircraft per squadron and eventually to 20.
Waco CG-4Agliders began to arrive to
supplement the
Airspeed Horsas which
had been in storage for some months.
By now,
men of the US 82nd Airborne
Division were gathering in the Leicester
area and a number of practice jumps were
undertaken. On one exercise, when the 316th was engaged in a
training drop called Operation 'Eagle' during the evening of 11
May, two leading aircraft of the group collided while manoeuvring
over the rally point. Both crews perished, including the Group CO,
Lieutenant Colonel Burton R. Fleet, who had been flying as an
observer in one of the aircraft.
Two days later Colonel Harvey Berger took command and he remained
with the 316th until he was killed on 3 April 1945 when his C-47
crashed south-west of
Cologne.
Normandy Invasion
On 5 June the hangars at Cottesmore served as temporary barracks
for the men of the 82nd Airborne Division.
That night, 1,256
paratroopers were carried in 72 of the 316th's aircraft to be
dropped west of Sainte-Mère-Église
where they were to secure road junctions and
bridges. Some flak was encountered over Normandy and 12 of
the C-47s returned with damage, one with a dead crew member
aboard.
On 7 June the group flew a re-supply mission to the same area but
suffered a serious collision between two aircraft while preparing
for takeoff. One pilot was killed.
Operation Market-Garden
The next involvement in airborne operations was
Operation "Market Garden".
On 17
September the group supplied 87 C-47s and three C-53s to carry
1,453 paratroops and 540 parapacks to the Nijmegen
area. One aircraft was forced to ditch after
a mid-air collision and minor flak damage was sustained by
three.
The next day, when the group towed 82 CG-4A gliders, heavy
Anti-Aircraft Artillery fire was met
and four C-47s were lost.
On the 23rd, the 316th towed 89 gliders to
Overasselt
, losing one plane, and on the 26th, 72 planes flew
troops and supplies to the airstrip at Kecnt, near
Grave.
During the winter months, the group returned to hauling supplies to
the Continent.
Operation Varsity
On 21
March 1945 most of the group's aircraft moved to RAF
Wethersfield
in Essex, a forward base for
Operation
Varsity
, the airborne crossing of the Rhine
.
Its
mission was to carry paratroops of the British 6th Airborne
Division, who were dropped near Wesel
on the
24th. Two C-47s were shot down and four others so
badly damaged they made emergency landings at Eindhoven
. Half the aircraft that returned directly to
Cottesmore had flak damage.
Legacy
During
the final weeks of the war, the 52nd TCW moved its groups to bases
in France, with the
exception of the 316th which was scheduled to return to the
United
States
in April. However, the group remained at Cottesmore
until the cessation of hostilities, although it did not stay long
thereafter as the major movement of personnel back to the USA began
on 11 May when the unit returned to Pope Army Airfield
, North
Carolina
.
The 316th TCG has special claims to fame. It was the only combat
group assigned to the original Ninth Air Force organisation in the
Middle East in 1942 to transfer to the UK, as well as being the
only Ninth Air Force combat group still based in England at the end
of the war albeit that IX TCC had been a component of the
First Allied Airborne Army since
September 1944.
A plaque was presented by the USAAF Troop Carrier units
commemorating the IX Troop Carrier Command's stay at Cottesmore and
it can still be seen outside the Station HQ.
Postwar Use
Cottesmore was officially handed back to the RAF on 1 July 1945. As
a pre-war base with permanent buildings, it was inevitable that it
would not remain vacant for long. Cottesmore again became a
training station. In 1954
English Electric Canberras were
moved in, the first time front-line combat aircraft had been based
there, but all had left by the end of 1955.
In 1957 it was announced that Cottesmore would became a base for
the
V-bomber force, carriers of Britain's
nuclear deterrent. The squadrons carried out
Quick Reaction
Alert duties using
Handley Page
Victor and later
Avro Vulcan
bombers, until 1969. When they left the base was used by 90 Signals
Group. Flight Checking, Trials and Evaluation Flight (FCTEF) used
98 Squadron (Canberras) and 115 Squadron (Varsity and Argosy) to
provide ILS and radar trials and checking services to RAF airfields
around the world.
Cottesmore became home to the
Tri-national Tornado
Training Establishment (TTTE). Established in July 1980 and
officially opened on 29 January 1981, the centre undertook training
of new
Panavia Tornado pilots from
the RAF,
Luftwaffe,
German Navy and
Italian Air Force.
The TTTE closed in 1999, and after a period of refurbishment was
replaced by the Harriers of Nos
3
and
4 squadrons; these were later
joined by
800 and
801 Naval Air Squadrons to form
Joint Force Harrier.
With the
introduction of the Eurofighter Typhoon into RAF service, No.3 Sqn
moved to RAF
Coningsby
and No.1 Sqn
moved from RAF
Wittering
.
Present Day Service
No 122 Expeditionary Air Wing (
EAW) was formed at the station on 1
April 2006 encompassing most of the non-formed unit personnel on
station. The EAW does not include the flying units at the station.
The station commander is dual-hatted as the commander of the
wing.
RAF Cottesmore is now home to the Joint Harrier Force (JHF) which
consists of No's 1(f) Sqn RAF, 4(a/c)Sqn RAF and the
Naval Strike Wing of the
Royal Navy, composed of a combined 800 and 801
Naval Air Sqns. Each of these operate and maintain 9 Harrier
aircraft (a/c), 18 in total at front line full readiness.They
currently operate Harrier GR7/7A, GR9/9A and training a/c
T10/T12.
Current structure
The RAF Cottesmore structure as of April 2008:
- 122 Expeditionary Wing
- Air Combat 1 Group
- 1 Fighter Squadron - Harrier
GR7/GR7A/GR9/GR9A/T10
- 4 (Army cooperation) Squadron -
Harrier GR7/GR7A/GR9/GR9A/T10
- NSW Naval Strike Wing (800&801NAS Combind) - Harrier
GR7/GR7A/GR9/GR9A/T10
- RAF Wittering, Cambridgeshire
- 20 (Reserve) Squadron - Harrier GR9/T10/T12
The future of RAF Cottesmore is uncertain when the Harrier leaves
service in 2018.
Station Commanders
- AVM James Johnson CB CBE 1957-60
- Air Cdre Robert Weighill CBE
DFC
1961-4
- AVM Kenneth Kingshott CBE DFC 1971
- Air Mshl Sir Michael Simmons CB
1980-2
- AVM Peter Goddard, CB 1984-6
- Air Chf Mshl Sir Peter Squire DFC 1986-8
- AVM Ronald Elder CBE 1988-90
- AVM Thomas Rimmer CB OBE 1990-2
- Air Mshl Philip Sturley CB MBE
1992-4
- AVM Andrew White CB 1996-9
- Group Captain Mcann 2007-2009
- Group Captain Waterfall 2009-?
See also
References
- Air Forces Monthly, April 2008 issue, pp.
44
- Air Forces Monthly, April 2008 issue, pp.
44
- Bruce Barrymore
Halpenny Action Stations: Wartime Military Airfields of
Lincolnshire and the East Midlands v. 2 (ISBN
978-0850594843)
- Freeman, Roger A. (1994) UK Airfields of the Ninth: Then and
Now 1994. After the Battle ISBN 0900913800
- Maurer, Maurer (1983). Air Force Combat Units Of World War II.
Maxwell AFB, Alabama: Office of Air Force History. ISBN
0892010924.
- [55167] USAAS-USAAC-USAAF-USAF Aircraft Serial
Numbers--1908 to present
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