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No. 124 Squadron RAF
No. 124 (Baroda) Squadron RAF was a Royal Air Force Squadron formed to be a light bomber unit in World War I and reformed as a fighter unit in World War II. History Formation and World War I No. 124 Squadron Royal Flying Corps was formed on 1 February 1918 at RFC Old Sarum and became a unit of the Royal Air Force. After a move to RAF Fowlmere 124 Sqn disbanded on 17 August 1918 having only operated as a training squadron.Lake, Alan. "Flying Units of the RAF".Airlife Publishing. Shrewsbury. 1999. World War II Around the outbreak of World War II, from April to September 1939, 124 Sqn was allocated a squadron code but the squadron was not stood up. The squadron eventually reformed on 10 May 1941 as a fighter unit equipped with Spitfire Mk I, stationed at RAF Castletown, to provide air defence for Scapa Flow from 29 June. In October 1941 it converted to Spitfire Mk IIBs. It was then moved to RAF Biggin Hill with Spitfire Mk V taking part in sorties against the German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many List of islands of the United Kingdom, smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RAF Northolt
RAF Northolt is a Royal Air Force station in South Ruislip, from Uxbridge in the London Borough of Hillingdon, western Greater London, England, approximately north of Heathrow Airport. The station handles many private civil flights in addition to Air Force flights. Northolt has one runway in operation, spanning , with a grooved asphalt surface. This airport is used for government and VIP transport to and from London. Northolt predates the establishment of the Royal Air Force by almost three years, having opened in May 1915, making it the oldest RAF base. Originally established for the Royal Flying Corps, it has the longest history of continuous use of any RAF airfield. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the station was the first to take delivery of the Hawker Hurricane. The station played a key role during the Battle of Britain, when fighters from several of its units, including No. 303 Polish Fighter Squadron, engaged enemy aircraft as part of the defence of London. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gloster Meteor
The Gloster Meteor was the first British jet fighter and the Allies' only jet aircraft to engage in combat operations during the Second World War. The Meteor's development was heavily reliant on its ground-breaking turbojet engines, pioneered by Frank Whittle and his company, Power Jets Ltd. Development of the aircraft began in 1940, although work on the engines had been under way since 1936. The Meteor first flew in 1943 and commenced operations on 27 July 1944 with No. 616 Squadron RAF. The Meteor was not a sophisticated aircraft in its aerodynamics, but proved to be a successful combat fighter. Gloster's 1946 civil Meteor F.4 demonstrator ''G-AIDC'' was the first civilian-registered jet aircraft in the world. Several major variants of the Meteor incorporated technological advances during the 1940s and 1950s. Thousands of Meteors were built to fly with the RAF and other air forces and remained in use for several decades. The Meteor saw limited action in the Second World W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RAF Molesworth
Royal Air Force Molesworth or more simply RAF Molesworth is a Royal Air Force station located near Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, England with a history dating back to 1917. Its runway and flight line facilities were closed in 1973 and demolished. New facilities were constructed to support ground-launched cruise missile operations in the early 1980s. It was one of the two British bases to house cruise missiles and a focus for protests. It is now a non-flying facility under the control of the United States Air Force (USAF), and is one of two Royal Air Force (RAF) stations in Cambridgeshire currently used by the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). Molesworth, RAF Alconbury and RAF Upwood were considered the "Tri-Base Area" due to their close geographic proximity and interdependency until RAF Upwood closed in late 2012. RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth were the last Second World War era Eighth Air Force airfields in the United Kingdom that were still actively in use and c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RAF Hutton Cranswick
Royal Air Force Hutton Cranswick or more simply RAF Hutton Cranswick is a former Royal Air Force station located to the south of Driffield and immediately south west of the village of Hutton Cranswick in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. The station was developed as a fighter base with many Spitfire fighter squadrons passing through. It was used by the Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), and several Polish Fighter Squadrons of the RAF. It was opened in 1942, and disposed of in 1946. History RAF Hutton Cranswick opened in January 1942 as a fighter airfield within No. 12 Group RAF. No. 4 Group of Bomber Command had recently taken over RAF Leconfield to the south, which had previously been a Fighter Command asset, so Hutton Cranswick was developed for the fighter element. Uncharacteristically for the time, its three runways were concreted from the beginning. Many Fighter Command airfields were initially built with grass runways which were later upgraded to c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RAF Hawkinge
Royal Air Force Hawkinge or more simply RAF Hawkinge is a former Royal Air Force station located east of Ashford, north of Folkestone, Kent and west of Dover, Kent, England. The airfield was used by both the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force during its lifetime and was involved during the Battle of Britain as well other important aerial battles during the Second World War and the early stages of aerial usage in war in the First World War. History First World War During the First World War the airfield was called RFC Folkestone until 29 December 1916 and RFC Hawkinge later on. The only squadron present during this period was No. 25 Squadron RFC between 19 and 20 February 1916 with Vickers F.B.5, Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2B and Morane-Saulnier L. An Aircraft Acceptance Park was in residence between 27 July 1917 and 12 October 1917 before being renamed to No. 12 Aircraft Acceptance Park which stayed until May 1919. Inter-war years Between the wars a number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ursel Airfield
Ursel Air Base is a joint public/military airport located 10.2 km southwest of Eeklo near Ursel, East Flanders, Belgium. History The airfield was established in the summer 1939 for the Belgian Air Force. The 14th Company Aviation-Auxiliary laid down a grass landing strip 2,950 feet (900 meters) long. On 11 May 1940, Belgian Air Force moved here Fairey Foxes and Renard R16s for attacking the German invaders. Five days later the airfield was bombed the first time by Germans, that occupied the badly damaged base on 27 May. After the Battle of Belgium was over, it was taken over by the Luftwaffe and used as an airfield during the occupation period. In July 1940, the runway was re-laid in concrete and hangars and operational buildings restored. In autumn 1940, Germans assigned the airfield to the Corpo Aereo Italiano, the air corps sent by Regia Aeronautica for operations against Britain. Ursel was the base of 18° ''Gruppo'', equipped with 50 Fiat CR.42 fighters, that arri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Advanced Landing Ground
Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) were temporary advance airfields constructed by the Allies during World War II during the liberation of Europe. They were built in the UK prior to the invasion and thereafter in northwest Europe from 6 June 1944 to V-E Day, 7 May 1945. Unlike the permanent airfields built in the United Kingdom and designed for the strategic bombardment of Germany, the tactical combat airfields on the continent were temporary, often improvised airfields to be used by the tactical air forces to support the advancing ground armies engaged on the battlefield. Once the front line moved out of range for the aircraft, the groups and squadrons moved up to newly built ALGs closer to the ground forces and left the ones in the rear for other support uses, or simply abandoned them. Overview When the Allies invaded Normandy on D-Day, Royal Air Force Airfield Construction Service engineers were among those in the initial assault waves. Their mission was to rapidly c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RAF Second Tactical Air Force
The RAF Second Tactical Air Force (2TAF) was one of three tactical air forces within the Royal Air Force (RAF) during and after the Second World War. It was made up of squadrons and personnel from the RAF, other British Commonwealth air forces, and exiles from German-occupied Europe. Renamed as British Air Forces of Occupation in 1945, 2TAF was recreated in 1951 and became Royal Air Force Germany in 1959. Formation 2TAF was formed on 1 June 1943 as HQ Tactical Air Force from Army Co-operation Command, in connection with preparations then in train to invade Europe a year later. It took units from both Fighter Command and Bomber Command in order to form a force capable of supporting the Army in the field. Bomber Command provided No. 2 Group with light bombers; Fighter Command was split into the Air Defence of Great Britain, retaining fighter units for home defence, and No. 83 Group and No. 84 Group operating aircraft, and No. 85 Group controlling ground-based units, for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peenemünde Army Research Center
The Peenemünde Army Research Center (german: Heeresversuchsanstalt Peenemünde, HVP) was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (''Heereswaffenamt''). Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket. The works were attacked by the British in Operation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945. History On April 2, 1936, the aviation ministry paid 750,000 reichsmarks to the town of Wolgast for the whole Northern peninsula of the Baltic island of Usedom. By the middle of 1938, the Army facility had been separated from the Luftwaffe facility and was nearly complete, with personnel moved from Kummersdorf. The Army Research Center (''Peenemünde Ost'') consisted of ''Werk Ost'' and ''Werk Süd'', while ''Werk West'' (Peenemünde West) was the Luftwaffe Test Site (), one of the four test and research facilities of the Luftwaffe, with i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wernher Von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun ( , ; 23 March 191216 June 1977) was a German and American aerospace engineer and space architect. He was a member of the Nazi Party and Allgemeine SS, as well as the leading figure in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany and later a pioneer of rocket and space technology in the United States. As a young man, von Braun worked in Nazi Germany's rocket development program. He helped design and co-developed the V-2 rocket at Peenemünde during World War II. Following the war, he was secretly moved to the United States, along with about 1,600 other German scientists, engineers, and technicians, as part of Operation Paperclip. He worked for the United States Army on an intermediate-range ballistic missile program, and he developed the rockets that launched the United States' first space satellite Explorer 1 in 1958. He worked with Walt Disney on a series of films, which popularized the idea of human space travel in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RAF Coltishall
Royal Air Force Coltishall, more commonly known as RAF Coltishall , is a former Royal Air Force station located North-North-East of Norwich, in the English county of Norfolk, East Anglia, which operated from 1938 to 2006. It was a fighter airfield in the Second World War and afterwards, a station for night fighters then ground attack aircraft until closure. After longstanding speculation, the future of the station was sealed once the Ministry of Defence announced that the Eurofighter Typhoon, a rolling replacement aircraft, displacing the ageing SEPECAT Jaguar, would not be posted 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 station badge was a stone tower surmounted by a mailed fist grasping three bird-bolts (blunt arrows), which symbolised a position of strength in defence of the homeland, indicative of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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