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Old 31st Mar 2021, 15:18
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XV490
 
Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: Over Will's mother's, and climbing
Age: 67
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RAF station – or not?

Can the airfield specialists help me out here? It's my belief that, once the US Army Air Force had raised Old Glory at the start of its tenure of a wartime UK airfield, the base was no longer 'RAF Station Anyname' – ie, it dropped the RAF prefix for the duration of the Americans' stay, becoming simply AAF-123 or just 'Anyname base/camp/aerodrome'.

An RAF officer (Flt Lt or Sqn Ldr) would meanwhile serve there for liaison, but the station was officially American under reverse Lend-Lease.

By contrast, USAF bases in the UK since 1951 have all been prefixed as RAF stations (by agreement, as I understand it).

I'm getting fed up with modern references to, for example, RAF Boreham (Essex), an airfield that was built by the Americans and only used, operationally, by American aircraft. I think Wikipedia is partly to blame – almost every military airfield entry is listed an an RAF station.

Post-war, when many airfields reverted to C&M or Air Ministry stewardship, an RAF prefix may well have been appropriate. But I've never seen a contemporary wartime reference to an active USAAF air base as being 'RAF' this or similar that.





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