RAF Henlow

When the RAF was formed on April 1, 1918, a list of its stations contains just one that enjoyed continuous operations for more than a century from that date – RAF Henlow.

Unfortunately, January 2024 saw official notification that Henlow would be joining a long list of stations whose service was no longer required, coming just four years after flying ended at a site that always maintained grass runways throughout more than a century of operation.

Located around 12 miles north east of Luton, the station was still being built when 40 airmen arrived from RAF Farnborough in May, 1918, to officially open RAF Henlow as a repair depot for aircraft from the Western Front, and by the time of the Armistice six months later, around 3,000 were working on site including 300 of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF).

                               

                              RAF Henlow, the Hunter aircraft                             

After the end of WWI it became home to a number of units over the following years – Nos. 19, 23, 43 and 80 Squadrons among them – and unlike many other sites was maintained as an active RAF airfield. By May 1920, the station had become the first parachute testing centre, early methods involving ‘volunteers’ hanging off the wings of Vimy aircraft, allowing the chute to deploy before drifting back to the ground.

A technical college was established at Henlow between the wars, among its students was Sir Frank Whittle, the co-creator of the jet engine, who was in charge of aero testing at the Bedfordshire site before moving on to Cambridge.

                                   

                               RAF Henlow control tower  

After WWII began, Henlow became one of the largest RAF maintenance units in the country under the direction of No. 13 MU, and was noted as one of the primary assembly sites for Hurricanes – built in Ontario, Canada, the aircraft were flight tested before being disassembled and shipped to Henlow for reassembly prior to their dispatch to stations across Britain.

The original control tower at Henlow was constructed from the wooden packing crates that were used to transport the Hurricane parts, and can be seen in the 1969 film, The Battle of Britain, a building now confined to history following a decision to demolish it in 2006 due to the rot in its wooden structure making it irreparable.

Henlow was a repair base for a variety of aircraft during the war years, and it didn’t escape the notice of the Luftwaffe with a number of attacks at the site, most notably in September 1940 when eight high explosive bombs damaged two aircraft hangars.

                     

         Hawker Hurricane prototypes 1935   

With aircraft production requirements drastically reduced post-war, Henlow returned to its role as a technical training college, later amalgamating with RAF College Cranwell, turning out thousands of cadets and engineering officers over the decades that followed.

In 1950, the station became home to the Radio Engineering Unit (REU), its responsibility to build and install ground radio and telecommunications equipment throughout the RAF at home and abroad. In 1980, a detachment of the RAF Support Command Signals HQ was formed at the station, splitting into two sections a year later, one tasked with installing upgraded communications, radars and airfield navigational aids to sites worldwide, RAFSEE,

the RAF Signals Engineering Establishment.

                         

In 2001, RAF Henlow and RAF Stanbridge were amalgamated with Wyton and Brampton, the latter two stations had merged in the mid 1990s, all four stations coming under the control of one commander – the new unit was named RAF Brampton Wyton Henlow, Stanbridge was not included in the name, and represented the largest RAF base in terms of geography and personnel.

The idea was to reduce administration costs, centralising support functions to enhance efficiency and resource sharing, with all stations involved in the support of defence intelligence and logistics functions, having shifted their focus from flying operations to non-operational support. The four-station formation was disbanded in April 2012 as part of a MoD efficiency exercise, Brampton closing soon after.

In the early 2010s, Henlow was named as one of around 15 RAF stations that was considered to be dangerously radioactive, the issue caused by the use of WWII military hardware containing radium. The radioactive element was used extensively to coat the dials of aircraft and other equipment in the 1940s so they could be seen in the dark, and when many of the aircraft were destroyed they were burned and the scrap dumped on RAF sites including Henlow – however, radium remains radioactive for thousands of years; after testing at the site, the MoD declared the threat to station users and the nearby public as “negligible”.

In May 2018, Henlow’s centenary was marked as one of only six RAF stations that appeared on the original RAF list of April 1918 that were still operational – considered to be home to the best grass airfield in the UK.

However, the celebrations were muted in the knowledge that the station was on the RAF’s closure list of sites in a £1billion savings programme, with July 2020 seeing the ending of all flying operations from Henlow, including recreational.

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