The RAF site by the Rock that is always ‘guarding the gateway’
SAPCE
While there are a number of overseas RAF stations located across the globe, all sites are very much part of the United Kingdom with several located on British Overseas Territory. One which some of the public will have first-hand experience of is RAF Gibraltar, the station which shares its runway with the civilian airport – a runway that is also unique in that it is crossed by a four-lane public road which connects the city with mainland Spain. It is an ideal location for its principal use as a staging post for military aircraft, but provides a challenge for pilots to navigate, lying between the world-famous near 1,400ft high Rock of Gibraltar and Spanish airspace, with the added dangers from turbulence generated around the Rock.
While Gibraltar’s British past dates back to the early part of the 18th Century during the War of Spanish Succession, construction of a military concrete runway began late in 1939, a grass airfield having been in use since the early 1930s. The site was initially utilised as an emergency landing ground by the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm, No. 200 (Coastal) Group RAF formed at Gibraltar in September 1939 to control all RAF units operating from the location.
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During the war years Gibraltar was made up of two sites, RAF North Front, on the site of the old racecourse, and RAF New Camp, built on reclaimed land and controlling the slipway and hangar used for flying boats; at times during World War Two it came under the control of both the RAF and the Navy – a joint RAF/RN Combined HQ commenced operations in 1942 – with the RAF focused on maritime patrol and anti-submarine operations. The importance of Gibraltar during World War Two as a control point between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean for Allied forces saw the airfield extended in 1941 with land reclaimed from the sea; a real threat to Gibraltar during the war years was of a German attack from mainland Spain, with the dictatorship of Franco expected to allow Hitler’s forces access through the country at some point – a fear that never materialised.
Search lights above Gibraltar WWII
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The threat of German occupation saw a network of tunnels constructed under Gibraltar in the lead up to and during WWII, creating an underground city capable of housing a 16,000-strong garrison with an 18-month supply of food and water, a population that could in theory remain intact in the event of German forces taking control above ground. The station and Gibraltar itself did, however, regularly come under attack, air raids launched from the north by German forces based in France and from the east and south by Italian forces, with the majority of the civilian population evacuated to Britain and Morocco during World War Two.
In November 1942, the station was a vital part of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa to defeat enemy forces in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, labelled by Churchill as “Gibraltar’s greatest contribution to the War”, with as many as 650 aircraft parked on site ready to depart. During the latter part of the war the station continued with its anti-submarine duties with specialist detector devices attached to a range of aircraft enabling them to detect German U-boats in the waters of the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The US Naval Fleet Air Wing 15 based in Morocco co-ordinated its anti-sub activities with RAF Gibraltar, the airship K-112 landing at the station on July 21, 1944, marking the first time a US Navy ‘blimp’ had landed on continental Europe.
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Gibraltar WWII
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Post-war, the site’s main role was initially for meteorological operations, before the onset of the Cold War saw increased aircraft operations patrolling the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean. Tensions with Franco’s Spain grew in the 1960s to the extent that attempts were made by the Spanish government to stop NATO using the airfield, then a ban imposed on RAF aircraft flying over Spanish airspace. The station only officially became RAF Gibraltar in 1966, and despite the barriers imposed by Spain, it has continued in its role as a staging post for RAF aircraft, the importance of which was clear during the Falklands War in 1982, with the station supporting a total of 325 operations of Hercules, to and from their flights to Wideawake on Ascension and beyond to the south Atlantic.
Utilised as a Forward Operating Base during both Gulf Wars, NATO duties over Bosnia, and for Middle East operations, it has remained a crucial site for the RAF, with a new RAF HQ officially opening in February 2011, reiterating Britain’s commitment to Gibraltar and its RAF station. Despite a core personnel of only around 20, the station is supported by the 1,000-strong MoD workforce based on ‘The Rock’ and, as it did during WWII, the location guards the gateway between the Atlantic and Mediterranean, ensuring a NATO presence on a route crucial to military and civilian shipping operations.
Runway restorations 2015
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