RAF Harwell
Harwell, Oxfordshire in England
A Short Stirling of No. 295 Squadron RAF, taking off from RAF Harwell towing an Airspeed Horsa glider, 17 September 1944. This was one of 25 Stirling/Horsa combinations which carried the Headquarters of I Airborne Corps to landing zones near Groesbeek, Nijmegen as part of Operation Market Garden
RAF Harwell Shown within Oxfordshire
Coordinates	51°34′30″N 1°18′43″W / 51.575°N 1.312°W / 51.575; -1.312
Type	Royal Air Force station
Code	HW
Site information
Owner	Air Ministry
Operator	Royal Air Force
Controlled by	RAF Bomber Command 1937-44 & 1945 RAF Fighter Command 1944-45
Site history
Built	1914 (1914) & 1936/37
Built by	John Laing & Son Ltd
In use	1914-?? February 1937 - 1945 (1945)
Battles/wars	European theatre of World War II
Airfield information
Elevation	117 metres (384 ft)[1] AMSL
Runways Direction Length and surface 00/00  Concrete 00/00  Concrete 00/00  Concrete

Royal Air Force Harwell or more simply RAF Harwell is a former Royal Air Force station, near the village of Harwell, located 4.8 miles (7.7 km) south east of Wantage, Oxfordshire and 17 miles (27 km) north west of Reading, Berkshire, England.

The site is now the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus which includes the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

History

The airfield was built by John Laing & Son Ltd at the junction of three parishes in 1935.^[2] The bulk lay within Chilton parish; about a third was in East Hendred; and the smallest portion was in Harwell. The first Commanding Officer, upon being asked what the name of the new airfield should be, responded that it should be named after the parish in which his house lay – and this happened to be Harwell.^[3]

Between 1938 and 1940 it was a development site of a prototype Royal Aircraft Establishment Mark III Catapult, whose intention was to enable take-offs using shorter runways and so the planes could be loaded with more fuel. Although technical problems caused its abandonment without ever launching an aircraft, it proved to be a precursor to Catapult Armed Merchant ships.^[4]

From its opening in February 1937 until March 1944, various bomber squadrons were stationed at the airfield. On the outbreak of the Second World War, it became part of No. 38 Group RAF, initially used for leaflet missions over France using Vickers Wellington bombers, later bombing raids on Bremen, Cologne and Essen. There were numerous Luftwaffe raids on the airfield from August 1940 until September 1941. The original grass field was replaced with concrete runways between July and November 1941.^[5]

The following squadrons were posted to Harwell:

The following units were also here at some point:^[14]

In March 1944, it was reallocated to 30 Group Airborne Forces, where it mainly operated tug aircraft towing Airspeed Horsa which were used in a number of operations. These included carrying the first glider-borne troops into Normandy to secure vital strategic positions in advance of the main landings on D-Day. A memorial to the men who flew from RAF Harwell who were killed on this operation now exists at one edge of the old airfield site, and a memorial service is held there annually. The airfield was also used briefly for Special Operations Executive (SOE) operations between July and September 1944.

Closure and subsequent use

The RAF station was closed at the end of 1945 and the site transferred to the Ministry of Supply on 1 January 1946, where it became the Atomic Energy Research Establishment. Over the years that reduced in scale and other science-based research moved in, such as the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in 1957. The site is now home to the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.