Building began in late 1937, but sources disagree on when the station opened. Two local aviation histories give 4 November 1940, the RAF Memorial Flight Club gives 7 January 1941 as the official opening, and the RAF’s station page says only 1941. None reconciles the dates, so this page gives 4 November 1940 – 7 January 1941. Either way, Coningsby opened as a No. 5 Group, Bomber Command station.

No. 106 Squadron arrived with Hampdens in late February 1941. Its first operation, against Cologne on 1–2 March, was a halting start: eight aircraft were detailed and only five got airborne. Two nights later the station lost its first aircraft, Hampden X3002, with its crew of four. No. 97 Squadron followed in March with the Avro Manchester, and both squadrons converted to the Lancaster at Coningsby.

Guy Gibson joined No. 106 Squadron at Coningsby in spring 1942, flying his first Manchester operation with it on 22 April and Lancasters by July. The squadron left for RAF Syerston at the turn of September and October 1942 (sources give 30 September and 1 October). Coningsby was then effectively closed from September 1942 to August 1943 while three hard runways were laid, the longest 1,950 yards.

The rebuilt airfield took in No. 617 Squadron on 30 August 1943. On 14–15 September its Lancasters set out for the Dortmund-Ems Canal and were recalled for weather; David Maltby’s aircraft was lost, almost certainly after colliding with a Mosquito. The next night eight tried again with 12,000 lb bombs and five were lost, including the new commanding officer, George Holden. The canal was undamaged. The squadron moved to Woodhall Spa in January 1944, and from April Nos. 83 and 97 Squadrons flew from Coningsby as 5 Group’s Pathfinders until 1946.

After the war the station flew Lincolns briefly, Mosquitos until March 1950, Boeing Washingtons, the RAF’s B-29s, from 1950 to 1953, and English Electric Canberras from 1953 to 1961. The Canberras brought jet bombing to Coningsby, but the more lasting Cold War legacy sits just outside the fence, at a site called Black Holt, which Historic England records was chosen as one of the supplementary storage areas for Britain’s atomic weapons.

In the early 1950s Black Holt was converted into a supplementary storage area for Blue Danube, Britain’s first operational atomic bomb, 7.3 metres long and weighing four tonnes. The bombs were kept in mounded reinforced-concrete buildings and the fissile cores separately. Later weapons followed, up to Yellow Sun Mark 1. Historic England counts 24 storage bays and links that figure to three squadrons of eight V-bombers at Coningsby.

Those squadrons flew Vulcans, which arrived in 1962. The RAF Museum’s record for Vulcan XM598 shows it delivered to No. 12 Squadron at Coningsby on 4 September 1963. On 1 March 1964 Nos. 9, 12 and 35 Squadrons were pooled into a single Coningsby Wing, and on 7 November 1964 the wing moved to RAF Cottesmore, ending Coningsby’s short V-force era.

Black Holt outlived the bombers. In the 1980s, as key airfields were hardened against nuclear, biological and chemical attack, one of its mounded test buildings became a Safe Command Post. The site closed in the 1990s and passed into private hands, and on 24 February 2020 Historic England listed its former testing building at Grade II. RAF Coningsby itself stayed open throughout.

Coningsby became a fighter station with the McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR2. No. 228 Operational Conversion Unit formed there in August 1968 as the first Phantom unit, followed by No. 6 Squadron in May 1969, No. 54 Squadron in September 1969 and No. 41 Squadron in April 1972. The Coningsby Phantoms began in the ground-attack role and moved to air defence once the Jaguar took over ground attack.

The Phantom years brought the station’s worst peacetime loss. On 9 August 1974 a No. 41 Squadron Phantom flown by the station commander, Group Captain David Blucke, collided with a crop-spraying aircraft over Norfolk, killing Blucke, his navigator, Flight Lieutenant Terence Kirkland, and the Pawnee pilot, Paul Hickmott, 24. Accident investigators blamed the lack of any system for co-ordinating military and civil low flying.

According to the Air Historical Branch, the air defence Tornado entered service in 1984 in its interim F2 form, and the first Tornado F3s arrived at Coningsby in July 1986. No. 229 OCU began training F3 crews there that month, and No. 29 Squadron, the first operational F3 squadron, took the type into service at Coningsby in April 1987. By 1990 the F3 equipped five squadrons, all based in Britain.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, crews from Nos. 5 and 29 Squadrons were on armament practice camp in Cyprus and were sent straight to Dhahran. The Air Historical Branch counts 12 F3s there by 11 August and 18 by 22 September. Over Operation Granby the F3 detachment, drawn from several stations, flew 2,666 sorties, 698 of them combat sorties during Desert Storm.

Coningsby was the first RAF station to fly the Typhoon on the front line. No. 29 Squadron, re-formed in 2003, was the second RAF squadron to receive the aircraft, and the early Typhoon units moved in from BAE Systems’ airfield at Warton in 2005. No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron arrived in 2006 as the first front-line Typhoon squadron, and No. XI (Fighter) Squadron stood up as a multi-role Typhoon squadron in 2007.

On 29 June 2007 the Typhoon became operational when No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron took over Quick Reaction Alert at Coningsby from the Tornado F3; 43 Typhoons had been delivered to the station by then. Coningsby holds the southern half of the task and RAF Lossiemouth the northern. In 2012 the RAF said its pilots stood 24-hour QRA shifts once or twice a month.

The Ministry of Defence does not publish exact launch figures. In 2020 it gave only the number of days on which UK QRA aircraft launched, for both stations together: 12, 12, 6, 9 and 14 for 2015 to 2019. Some launches are heard on the ground: on 12 January 2021 Coningsby Typhoons flew supersonic to reach a civil aircraft that had lost communications, and the boom carried across London and the eastern counties.

Today the RAF lists No. 3 (Fighter) and No. XI (Fighter) Squadrons as the front-line units, with No. 29 Squadron training Typhoon pilots. No. 12 Squadron re-formed in July 2018 as a joint Royal Air Force and Qatar Emiri Air Force Typhoon squadron and began joint operations at Coningsby in 2020. No. XI (Fighter) Squadron carries the battle honour Libya 2011 from the Typhoon’s combat debut.

The Flight was inaugurated on 11 July 1957 at RAF Biggin Hill as the RAF Historic Aircraft Flight, became the Battle of Britain Flight and took its present name in 1969. Between 1959 and 1965 it had just one Spitfire, PM631, and one Hurricane, LF363; both are still on strength. It arrived at Coningsby from RAF Coltishall on 1 March 1976, and in 2026 the station marked 50 years as its home.

The RAF lists the fleet as five Spitfires, Hurricanes LF363 and PZ865, Lancaster PA474, the Dakota ZA947 and two Chipmunks, WG486 and WK518. The Flight notes that only 12 airworthy Hurricanes and two airworthy Lancasters are left in the world. Its hangar is open to the public through a visitor centre, recently refurbished in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council. In 2018, for the RAF’s centenary, the hangar also showed the RAF Museum’s Hawker Typhoon MN235, the sole surviving example of its type.

On 11 September 1991 Hurricane LF363, flying in formation with the Lancaster and a Spitfire from Coningsby to Jersey, suffered a camshaft failure. The engine stopped on the approach to RAF Wittering and the aircraft crashed on the airfield; its pilot escaped with a broken ankle and minor burns. The rebuild took years, and the Flight sold Spitfire PS853 to help pay for it. LF363 flew again on 29 September 1998.

Only one BBMF accident has been fatal. On 25 May 2024 Spitfire MK356, built in 1944, crashed near Coningsby, killing Squadron Leader Mark Long, 43; FlightGlobal reported it as the first fatal loss involving a BBMF aircraft since 1957. The Flight was grounded. In March 2025 the RAF cleared its Spitfires and Hurricanes to fly again while the investigation continued.

The squadron that now tests the Typhoon’s tactics has a long fighting record. Formed as No. 41 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps and sent to France in 1916, it flew Spitfires through Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, when Eric Lock, the RAF’s highest-scoring pilot of the battle, served on it. In 1944 it destroyed 53 V-1 flying bombs in nine weeks.

Its first Coningsby connection came on 1 April 1972, when it re-formed there on the Phantom FGR2. It was one of the squadron’s Phantoms that the station commander was flying in the fatal collision over Norfolk in August 1974. The squadron converted to the Jaguar in 1977, ending five years of Phantom flying from Coningsby. Its motto is Seek and destroy.

In 2006, facing disbandment as a front-line unit, it became No. 41 (Reserve) Squadron, the Fast Jet and Weapons Operational Evaluation Unit. In 2013 it became No. 41 (Reserve) Test and Evaluation Squadron and received its first Typhoon. Now written XLI Test and Evaluation Squadron, it belongs to the Air and Space Warfare Centre, headquartered at RAF Waddington, and the RAF describes its main focus as Typhoon capability and tactics development.