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RAF Molesworth

Airfields of the VIII Bomber Command in the United KingdomInstallations of the United States Air Force in the United KingdomNonviolent occupationPeace campsPortal templates with redlinked portals
Royal Air Force stations in CambridgeshireRoyal Air Force stations in HuntingdonshireRoyal Air Force stations of World War II in the United KingdomUse British English from July 2011
RAF Molesworth 25Jan1989
RAF Molesworth 25Jan1989

Royal Air Force Molesworth or more simply RAF Molesworth is a Royal Air Force station located near Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, England with a history dating back to 1917. Its runway and flight line facilities were closed in 1973 and demolished. New facilities were constructed to support ground-launched cruise missile operations in the early 1980s. It was one of the two British bases to house cruise missiles and a focus for protests. It is now a non-flying facility under the control of the United States Air Force (USAF), and is one of two Royal Air Force (RAF) stations in Cambridgeshire currently used by the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). Molesworth, RAF Alconbury and RAF Upwood were considered the "Tri-Base Area" due to their close geographic proximity and interdependency until RAF Upwood closed in late 2012. RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth were the last Second World War era Eighth Air Force airfields in the United Kingdom that were still actively in use and controlled by the United States Air Force. It was from Molesworth on 4 July 1942 that the first USAAF Eighth Air Force mission was flown over Nazi-occupied territory. Today the base is home to the Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytic Center, and a number of units from the 423rd Air Base Group.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article RAF Molesworth (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

RAF Molesworth
Brington Road, Huntingdonshire Brington and Molesworth

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
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Wikipedia: RAF MolesworthContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 52.379444444444 ° E -0.405 °
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Address

Brington Road

Brington Road
PE28 5AG Huntingdonshire, Brington and Molesworth
England, United Kingdom
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RAF Molesworth 25Jan1989
RAF Molesworth 25Jan1989
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Nearby Places

Stow Longa

Stow Longa is a village and civil parish in Cambridgeshire, England. Stow Longa lies approximately 8 miles (13 km) west of Huntingdon and two miles north of Kimbolton. Stow Longa is situated within Huntingdonshire which is a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as being a historic county of England. Stow Longa's original name was Stow or Long Stow, which comes from the Old English word stōw (meaning 'holy place') and the Latin word longa or Old English lang (meaning 'long'). Altogether, Stow Longa's name may mean 'the long holy place' or 'an extended settlement which is a holy place', though this is only a rough guess. Stow was also thought to have been the name of the pre-Conquest estate, which, in the medieval period, was split between two parishes: one, Over Stow or Upper Stow, the western part, which belonged to the Kimbolton parish, and the other, Estou (also Nether Stow or Long Stow), the eastern part, which was part of the soke of Spaldwick. Mistakenly described as a hamlet, it has the suitable number of houses and businesses to make it a village. Stow Longa is a village that is still void of any street lamps, village shops, a school or a public house. Sewer drainage came to the village in 2009. However, Stow Longa does possess several thatched cottages, a village room, a blocked-up well (on the village green), a stone cross (discussed below) and mature elm trees that survived the Dutch elm disease crisis. RAF Kimbolton was opened as a bomber airfield on the southern edge of the village in 1941, and was operated by the USAAF from 1942 to 1945. According to a locally published collection of short stories, 'Ploughing Songs' by Damian Croft, the reason why the public houses that were in Stow Longa were closed down in the 1950s was because, "returning drovers used it to give a bad name to a few otherwise nameless women."