RAF Wainfleet - History

History

The range opened in August 1938. However usage of the site as a range dated back to 1890 by the 1st Lincolnshire Artillery. During the 1920s and 1930s it was also used by the RAF and Royal Artillery. The range was administered by RAF Coningsby as an Air Weapons Range within RAF Strike Command. On 1 April 2006 control was transferred to Defence Estates and the range was then administered by Defence Training Estates (East) from their headquarters at West Tofts Camp near Thetford. It was used by both fixed wing and rotary aircraft from NATO. During the Second World War, it was used by 617 Squadron to test the Stabilizing Automatic Bomb Sight. Due to funding cuts the range was closed for operations on 2 December 2009 and finally closed in July 2010.

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