Brize Norton was built in the RAF expansion of the late 1930s and, according to the RAF, officially opened on 13 August 1937. Its first unit, No. 2 Flying Training School, arrived on 7 September 1937. A maintenance unit and, from 1940, a second flying school also used the airfield, so its hangars and dispersals were full of training aircraft.

That made it a rich target. On 16 August 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain, two German bombers attacked the airfield. The Bampton Community Archive records that Nos 1 and 3 hangars were destroyed together with 46 aircraft, which other accounts break down as 35 Airspeed Oxford trainers and 11 Hawker Hurricanes. The archive calls it possibly the most spectacular attack on any British airfield of the war.

The human cost is recorded differently from source to source. The Bampton Community Archive names one civilian killed at Brize Norton, Frederick Harden, 61, of Witney. A day-by-day Battle of Britain chronology records five personnel wounded and damage to hangars, barracks and the institute building. Neither figure could be checked against the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database for this page, so both are given here as reported.

In July 1942 Brize Norton changed role. The Heavy Glider Conversion Unit moved in with 34 Armstrong Whitworth Whitley glider tugs, 56 Airspeed Horsa gliders and two Oxfords, according to the RAF’s own history of the station in the Normandy campaign. A Glider Instructors School followed in October 1942. A Horsa could carry up to 25 troops, or artillery and vehicles. Concrete runways and new hangars were laid in early 1943.

In March 1944 two operational squadrons, No. 296 and No. 297, arrived with Albemarle tugs. On the night of 5 to 6 June they flew Operation Tonga. Seven Albemarles, three from No. 296 and four from No. 297, left at 2300 carrying the pathfinders who marked the drop zones for the 6th Airborne Division. Further waves followed carrying 5th Parachute Brigade and 9th Parachute Battalion.

On the evening of 6 June each squadron sent 20 Albemarles on Operation Mallard, the glider lift. The RAF records one glider crashing on take-off, one crash-landing in England, one brought down by enemy fire in France, and one Albemarle shot down. On 7 June, Operation Cooney carried French paratroops and Special Air Service men. Both squadrons took part in the Arnhem landings in September; the RAF account says they flew that operation from RAF Manston.

The glider school stayed longer. The RAF says the unit, later No. 21 Heavy Glider Conversion Unit, remained until 31 December 1945. The cost of training is still remembered locally. On 27 August 1944 an Albemarle of No. 297 Squadron overshot on landing and crashed near Black Bourton, killing its crew of five. A cairn at Mill Farm marks the site.

After the war the airfield passed to the United States. The RAF states that the USAF formally accepted control on 16 April 1951, first basing Convair B-36 Peacemaker bombers there and later B-47 Stratojets. The RAF took it back on 1 April 1965. This page keeps to that outline because the more detailed accounts of the American period could not be checked against a primary source.

The Vickers VC10 served the RAF for 47 years as a jet transport and later as a tanker. It flew its last operational sortie on 20 September 2013, when two aircraft, ZA147 and ZA150, refuelled Typhoons, Tornados and Hercules before flying a farewell tour of RAF stations. The station commander said the VC10 had flown hostages home, the Royal Family and prime ministers.

A huge new hangar was built to service the VC10s. The National Transport Trust says it was completed in 1969, is a quarter of a mile long with no internal supports, and was then the largest cantilever-roofed structure in Europe. An archive film catalogued by the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust dates its completion to 1967. The Trust says it could hold two TriStars, or a TriStar and a C-17.

No. 216 Squadron’s Lockheed TriStars joined the VC10 as transports and tankers. The government said they served the RAF for 30 years. In their last eight years No. 216 Squadron flew to Afghanistan 1,642 times, carrying 250,000 passengers each way. The final operational flight was on 24 March 2014. By 2010 the combined fleet was 15 VC10s and nine TriStars, which had entered military service between 1966 and 1993.

The VC10 and TriStar were replaced by the Airbus A330 Voyager, but not bought in the ordinary way. Under the Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft private finance deal signed in March 2008, the AirTanker consortium owns, maintains and supports 14 aircraft for 27 years. The contract was valued at £10.5 billion. The National Audit Office put the average cost of the core service at about £390 million a year.

The Ministry of Defence has a core fleet of nine aircraft. The RAF describes this as eight military-registered aircraft and one civil-registered aircraft. A further five surge aircraft can be leased commercially by AirTanker when the RAF does not need them. No. 10 Squadron reformed on the Voyager on 1 July 2011. The RAF says the type began operations in 2012 and was fully operational as a tanker by 2013.

The auditors were blunt. In March 2010 the National Audit Office said it could not conclude that the Department had achieved value for money from the procurement. It found that the in-service date had slipped by five and a half years. It also noted that the original requirement had not foreseen flying into high-threat places such as Afghanistan. The Public Accounts Committee added that negotiations had taken over nine years.

The Defence Committee had worried in 2007 that the deal was still unsigned a decade after first being proposed as a private finance project. In 2023 it returned to the subject. It said that although the Atlas was designed to refuel other aircraft, the Ministry of Defence relied only on the Voyager. It reported that the reason was a contractual undertaking making the Ministry liable to pay AirTanker compensation if another aircraft did the job.

Repatriation ceremonies were held at Brize Norton until April 2007. They then moved to RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire so that Brize Norton’s aircraft servicing platform could be rebuilt. Hearses from Lyneham drove through the market town of Wootton Bassett on their way to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. What began as an impromptu tribute by the town’s mayor grew into crowds lining the street in silence.

The first two soldiers honoured in the town, in April 2007, were Aaron Lincoln and Danny Wilson. The government recorded 167 repatriation ceremonies in the town, the last on 18 August 2011. The Imperial War Museum gives 167 service personnel repatriated. Forces News gives 345 men and women over 167 repatriations. The town was granted the title Royal Wootton Bassett, confirmed on 16 October 2011.

With Lyneham closing, repatriations returned to Brize Norton on 1 September 2011. The Ministry of Defence chose it as the most cost-effective option, since it already ran 24 hours a day and could take the C-17. A £2.8 million repatriation centre was built, with a new exit, Britannia Gate. On the first repatriation, of Sergeant Barry Weston of 42 Commando Royal Marines, nearly 4,000 people lined the route, more than 2,500 of them in Carterton.

Oxfordshire County Council commissioned a Repatriation Memorial Garden in Norton Way, Brize Norton. The Union Flag from Royal Wootton Bassett is flown there on repatriation days. The memorial bell, cast by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, tolls at repatriations. Its stone came from a Cotswold quarry. The cortege route runs through Carterton and along the A40 to the John Radcliffe Hospital.

The closure of RAF Lyneham made Brize Norton the RAF’s single air transport hub. The Hercules fleet and its squadrons moved in in July 2011. The Future Brize programme rebuilt much of the station around them. In 2010 the National Audit Office put the cost of consolidating transport and tanker aircraft at the station at £151 million. Accounts differ on the scale of the change: the station was expected to grow from about 28–30 aircraft to about 67–70.

No. 99 Squadron had reformed in 2000 as the RAF’s only C-17 operator and now shares the eight aircraft with No. XXIV Squadron. The Atlas entered service in 2014 with No. LXX Squadron, and No. 30 Squadron converted to it in 2021. The Hercules retired on 30 June 2023, some seven years before its planned out-of-service date; the Defence Committee reported that its witnesses were almost unanimously critical. No. 47 Squadron disbanded that September, to be reformed at the first opportunity.

Putting nearly everything on one runway made that runway a weak point. In July 2022 the RAF moved aircraft to other airfields during the record heat. In 2023 the 3,050 m runway needed heat-damage repairs at both ends. On 27 July 2026 the station handed the runway over for complete replacement under Operation MACE Vector. The government puts the cost at £180 million, with work continuing into 2027.

While the runway is rebuilt, Atlas and C-17 crews are flying mainly from MoD Boscombe Down, with occasional use of Bournemouth Airport. Voyagers are operating from Prestwick, East Midlands and Stansted. The RAF says 40 aircraft and about 1,600 air wing personnel moved out. Asked in August 2026 about a commercial alternative should Brize Norton be unavailable, a minister replied that the fleet was dispersed and Defence Readiness legislation was being developed.