RAF Lindholme - Latter Years

Latter Years

In mid 1960s to the early 1970s Lindholme was being used as a weekend gliding airfield by the Humber gliding club a member of the Royal Air Force Gliding and Soaring Association. It was used extensively by the Sheffield Scouting movement as a base for gliding activities to attain Scout airman badges.

By 1980 Lindholme had been reduced to the status of a relief landing ground for RAF Finningley.

In 1974 RAF Lindholme became home to 643 Gliding School Air Training Corps. 643 GS moved in from RAF Hemswell on 1 April. They operated winch launched Cadet Mk 3 and Sedbergh gliders conducting air experience and glider pilot training for Air Cadets. 643 GS remained at Lindholme until the airfield closed in 1982 whereupon they moved to RAF Scampton.

By 1985 the whole camp was sold and turned into Lindholme (HM Prison).

The last RAF connection, an automatic routing installation, which opened on 25 May 1983 and was run by 840 Signals Unit was closed in March 1996. It occupied the old Northern Radar building ground floor, refurbished to accommodate the Telegraphic Automatic Routing Equipment (TARE) and a manual telegraphic switching centre and was parented by RAF Finningley. The TARE was a dual suite Ferranti Argus 500 computer system, each suite having a 64k word core store and two 2Mbyte hard drives and running software written using Coral 66.

Before installation at Lindholme this TARE, one of two, had been installed in transportable cabins, originally destined for RAF Gan (Maldives) or RAF Episkopi (Cyprus). Though hard standings were constructed at the intended sites the cabins were never deployed, having been overtaken by defence cuts. The TAREs were stored and then removed from the cabins. The first was installed at RAF Boddington as No 9 Signals Unit and the second eventually arrived at Lindholme. The opening of 840 Signals unit allowed the RAF to close the Signals unit at RAF Stanbridge and sell off a large part of that site. It also gave the Defence Communications Network (DCN) much needed diversity by providing a third TARE (RAF Rudloe Manor and RAF Boddington being the others) at a critical point in the Cold War. The unit was commanded by a Squadron Leader of the Engineering Branch and was divided into two flights, Engineering Flight and Operations Flight. As the unit operated 24 hours a day a watch system was worked with a small engineering shift and a larger operations shift with a Warrant Officer running each watch.