RAF Lossiemouth opened in 1939 on flat coastal farmland beside the Moray fishing town that gives it its name. The RAF’s own station history records its first unit as No. 15 Flying Training School: it was built to teach pilots, not to fight from. The war changed that quickly. The same history lists anti-shipping operations from the station throughout 1939–1945, including by IX (Bomber) and 617 Squadrons.

The war reached the airfield on the evening of 26 October 1940. Three Heinkel He 111s attacked at low level, destroying at least one Blenheim, setting buildings alight and damaging a hangar; one of the raiders crashed on the aerodrome, probably caught by its own bombs. Accounts of the toll differ: the Battle of Britain Historical Society’s timeline gives two killed and twelve injured, other station histories three dead.

Lossiemouth’s best-known wartime connection is with the German battleship Tirpitz, lying in Norwegian fjords. For the autumn 1944 attacks, Lancasters of IX and 617 Squadrons flew north to Lossiemouth, Kinloss and Milltown in Moray. Operation Obviate on 29 October was defeated by cloud. On 12 November, in Operation Catechism, the bombers found the ship clear; two Tallboys hit it and Tirpitz capsized near Tromsø. The 5 Group signal to Lossiemouth read: “The job is done. The ship has capsized.”

After the war the Air Ministry handed the airfield to the Admiralty. The Fleet Air Arm’s own history, The Fulmar Story, records that the Royal Naval Air Station was commissioned as HMS Fulmar on 7 July 1946, when Wing Commander E. A. Johnston handed over command to Captain D. MacIntyre, Royal Navy. For the next 26 years Lossiemouth was a naval air station, first training Fleet Air Arm pilots and later basing front-line strike squadrons.

The Navy rebuilt the airfield for jets. In 1952–1953 it extended two of the three wartime runways: 23/05 from 5,720 ft to 9,140 ft and 29/11 from 4,050 ft to 6,068 ft. Sea Hawks, Scimitars and Sea Venoms followed, and in March 1961 the Blackburn Buccaneer arrived to replace the Scimitar. Lossiemouth became the Navy’s Buccaneer headquarters, and in 1966 the station’s strength reached a record figure of more than 2,500 personnel plus 500 civilians.

The station’s most public moment came on 28 March 1967, when Buccaneers of 800 and 736 Naval Air Squadrons were ordered to bomb the stranded supertanker Torrey Canyon off Cornwall; 23 direct hits were reported from 36 bombs. From 11 September 1967 to 12 March 1970 the commanding officer was Captain Eric Brown. In the end 809 Naval Air Squadron, the last Buccaneer unit, flew off to embark in HMS Ark Royal on 4 September 1972, and the RAF took the station back on 28–29 September 1972. Sources give both dates.

The first RAF unit back was D Flight of No. 202 Squadron with search and rescue helicopters. In August 1973 No. 8 Squadron (today written VIII) moved in from RAF Kinloss with the Shackleton AEW2. It was a piston-engined airborne early warning aircraft, kept flying until the E-3D Sentry entered RAF service in 1991. The Shackletons flew from Lossiemouth until they were retired on 1 July 1991. One, WR965, was lost on Harris in 1990 with all ten aboard.

Buccaneers returned too, this time in RAF colours; Press and Journal archive photographs show RAF Buccaneers being loaded with bombs at Lossiemouth in 1981. In 1991 the type went to war: No. 12 Squadron’s own history records that it flew the Buccaneer in Operation Granby, the Gulf War. On 13 March 1991 families at Lossiemouth welcomed the Buccaneer air, ground and support crews home after two months away.

The Tornado took the Buccaneer’s place. In 1994 No. 617 Squadron transferred to RAF Lossiemouth with the Tornado GR1B in the anti-shipping role, and stayed for twenty years. It flew from there to the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, returned from its final Herrick deployment on 30 January 2014 and disbanded on 28 February 2014. No. XV (Reserve) Squadron trained Tornado crews at the station, and lost two aircraft and three aircrew in a collision over the Moray Firth in July 2012.

Its future was not settled until 2011. After the 2010 defence review the futures of both Moray stations, Lossiemouth and Kinloss, were in doubt. On 18 July 2011 the Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, told the Commons that the Typhoon force due to be built up at RAF Leuchars “will instead be built up at RAF Lossiemouth,” while Marham kept the Tornado GR4 and Kinloss went to the Army. The Moray MP Angus Robertson congratulated “the whole Moray community” on the campaign to keep both sites.

The Typhoons came from Fife. On 8 September 2014 No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron relocated from RAF Leuchars. The Ministry of Defence announced that No. 1 (Fighter) and No. 6 Squadrons would now provide Quick Reaction Alert cover for the north of the UK, with southern QRA based at RAF Coningsby. No. II (Army Cooperation) Squadron followed from RAF Marham in 2015, converting from Tornado to Typhoon, and No. IX (Bomber) Squadron re-formed at Lossiemouth in 2019 as a Typhoon aggressor and QRA squadron.

The first live QRA North launch from Lossiemouth came on 19 September 2014, when Typhoons of No. 6 Squadron went up to meet two Russian Bear aircraft in international airspace. A Ministry of Defence freedom of information response in March 2020 gave the number of days on which UK QRA launched: 12, 12, 6, 9 and 14 in 2015–2019. Russian military aircraft were involved on 8, 5, 3, 7 and 8 of those days. The ministry withheld the exact number of launches.

A written parliamentary answer of 2 July 2026 gave six launch days against Russian aircraft in 2025. As before, it gave combined figures for Lossiemouth and Coningsby rather than a split by station. On 2 May 2023, for example, Lossiemouth Typhoons refuelled by a Voyager from RAF Brize Norton met a Tu-142 Bear-F alongside Norwegian F-35As; it had come in from the north-east over the Norwegian Sea and never entered UK sovereign airspace.

For decades the RAF’s submarine hunters flew from RAF Kinloss, just along the Moray coast. The Nimrod MR2 was withdrawn in March 2010, and in October 2010 the Strategic Defence and Security Review cancelled its replacement, the Nimrod MRA4. The National Audit Office found that the project was 114 months late and £789 million over its original approved cost of £2.8 billion. The planned fleet had shrunk from 21 aircraft to 9, and £3.4 billion had been spent by 31 March 2011.

The Defence Committee reported in September 2012 that the UK had no current or planned sovereign maritime patrol aircraft. It noted that the Ministry of Defence accepted the gap could not be fully covered by any other asset or combination of assets, from Type 23 frigates to Merlin helicopters, and that the UK relied on allies meanwhile. The Committee was “unconvinced” the ministry could respond to any escalation and asked why it was satisfactory to wait until 2015 to decide. Nine Boeing P-8 Poseidons were eventually ordered to close it.

The first, Pride of Moray, flew 4,060 miles from Jacksonville, Florida, and landed at Kinloss on 4 February 2020, ending what the Royal Navy called a decade-long gap. It used Kinloss because Lossiemouth’s runways were being resurfaced in a £75 million programme. On 13 October 2020 ZP802, City of Elgin, became the first Poseidon to arrive at Lossiemouth. The ninth and last, ZP809, was delivered in January 2022. No. 120 and No. 201 Squadrons fly the fleet with Royal Navy personnel in each crew, and No. 42 (Torpedo Bomber) Squadron re-formed in 2023 to train them.

The figures for the building work vary with who is counting. The RAF put the total modernisation of Lossiemouth at £400 million and the Royal Navy at nearly £500 million. For the Poseidon strategic facility, since renamed the Atlantic Building, the RAF gave £132 million and Defence Equipment and Support gave £100 million. The RAF also counted 400 additional personnel coming to the station to fly and support the nine aircraft.

The E-3D Sentry, flown by No. VIII Squadron from RAF Waddington since 1991, was retired in 2021, leaving the UK without its own airborne early warning aircraft. Its replacement, the E-7 Wedgetail, shares the Poseidon’s Boeing 737 airframe, and the RAF expects the two fleets to benefit from sharing a base. The House of Commons Library records that five aircraft were ordered in 2019 and the order was cut to three after the 2021 defence command paper. The Defence Committee called that decision the most perverse of the review: a 40% fleet cut for an acquisition saving of just 12%.

The programme has also run late. In July 2025 the Library expected the Wedgetail to enter service towards the end of 2025, two years later than first planned. The first aircraft, WT001, left STS Aviation Services at Birmingham Airport and landed at RAF Lossiemouth on 21 May 2026. It still had to go through test and evaluation at MOD Boscombe Down and Lossiemouth before formal transfer to the RAF.

No. VIII Squadron forms the UK’s contribution to NATO’s airborne early warning force. Its aircrew and engineers are trained next door by No. 42 (Torpedo Bomber) Squadron, which began Wedgetail engineer training in 2024 and aircrew training in 2025. The June 2025 Strategic Defence Review recommended buying more E-7s when funding allows, noting that NATO cost-sharing might offset some of the infrastructure and operating costs.