RAF Leeming

RAF Leeming is a Royal Air Force station near Leeming in North Yorkshire. It sits on land that once hosted Londonderry Aerodrome, used by local flying enthusiasts in the 1930s. The RAF bought the site and built a decoy airfield six and a half kilometres away at Burneston. During the Second World War it became a bomber station with Handley Page Halifax aircraft. From 1943 it served No. 6 Group Royal Canadian Air Force alongside a sub-station at RAF Skipton-on-Swale. The station has trained thousands of aircrew since the 1950s. It housed Quick Reaction Force Panavia Tornado F3 fighters through the Cold War and into the early 21st century. Today it is home to No. 135 Expeditionary Air Wing and the deployable RAF communications cadre. The station’s air traffic control unit won the Royal Air Force’s top prize in 2012. A reverse assembly line once stripped retired Tornado jets of usable parts in one of the hangars. Visitors see the hardened aircraft shelters built in 1987 and the main runway opened that January. A memorial marks the 1944 crash site of an RCAF Halifax near Romanby Golf & Country Club. The station still operates flying training with Hawk aircraft and hosts support units such as 607 Squadron. The surrounding North Yorkshire countryside stretches out beyond the perimeter fence.