About Netheravon Airfield

Netheravon Airfield played a significant role in the birth of the RFC, the RAF, the Fleet Air Arm and the Army Air Corps, and is the longest continuously operated airfield in the world.

The training of army pilots began at Larkhill in 1910, with the first hangars sited approximately where the Stonehenge visitors car park is now. Netheravon was then established as the first operational Army airfield, while Upavon was opened as The Central Avery Flying School. With the Balloon and Kite Sections and Companies of the Royal Engineers now joined by aeroplanes, the Royal flying Corps (RFC) was created on 13 May 1912. 

In 1912, 2 (Aeroplane) Battalion became 3 Sqn Royal Flying Corps at Netheravon Airfield. A number of their original buildings are still in operational use today and represent the first purpose-built accommodation structures erected for RFC squadrons.

In 1914 the military wing of the RFC gathered in Netheravon for what was known as the "Concentration Camp" to discuss principles and operational techniques for the world’s first effective air force. They experimented with methods of observation, reconnaissance, photography, offensive action and direction of fire and undertook the first aerial use of ‘˜wireless telegraphy‘s. Shortly afterwards war was declared; together with the Central Flying School at Upavon, Netheravon was one of the main training bases where new pilots learned how to fly and the location for forming many of the squadrons destined for the Western Front.

The RFC became the Royal Air Force at the end of the First World War.  Netheravon became No. 1 Flying Training School and home to a bomber squadron.  The first pilots of the Fleet Air Arm were trained here when the Admiralty gained control of ship-borne aircraft in 1924 and it was here that the first military rotary-wing flying trials took place in 1933. Between the wars Netheravon was the venue for the world record free-fall parachute jump from 20,000 feet, and in 1937 a new height record was set by an aircraft climbing to over 16.2 km (53,000 ft).

The outbreak of the Second World War accelerated the need for pilots and the Flying Training School was kept busy.  Netheravon was at the forefront of radical change in aerial warfare when in 1942 the advance party of the Glider Exercise Squadron arrived.  Within a month, the first gliders were being flown from Netheravon.  From then on parachute and glider borne troops learned their trade at Netheravon, which became a strategically important station for the remainder of the war.

Although Dakota transport aircraft continued to operate from Netheravon after the war, RAF flying declined and in the 1950s Netheravon became the Depot and training centre for the RAF Police. The RAF finally left Netheravon in 1963; after use as a transit camp for units exercising on Salisbury Plain, the Army Air Corps took it over in 1966. 

The major aviation unit today is 7 Regt AAC(V), formed in 1969 to provide liaison flying for the Regular Army and general aviation support for the Territorial Army. Netheravon also houses the Army's Headquarters Theatre Troops, which comprises eleven subordinate formations dispersed throughout the United Kingdom and Germany, amounting in total to some 35,000 troops providing specialist capabilities.