Middle Wallop was planned before the war as a bomber station and switched to Fighter Command while it was still being built, according to the Airshows Present airfield history: a grass field with a concrete perimeter track and five C-type hangars. Wikipedia dates the RAF opening to April 1940, first as a flying training school. By the summer it was a sector station, first in No. 11 Group and from late August 1940 in No. 10 Group.

No. 609 Squadron’s Spitfires flew from here from July to November 1940, with a forward flight at Warmwell; Wikipedia’s squadron history credits it with 46 enemy aircraft destroyed in August 1940 alone and, on 21 October 1940, with becoming the first squadron to reach 100 confirmed kills. No. 238 Squadron’s Hurricanes shared the field from June 1940 to February 1941. Wikipedia names the American volunteers Andy Mamedoff, ‘Red’ Tobin and ‘Shorty’ Keough among the Battle of Britain pilots here.

The airfield paid for its role. The Airshows Present history records that on 14 August 1940 three Ju 88s bombed hangars 4 and 5, killing three airmen and wrecking 609 Squadron’s hangar and offices along with several Spitfires and Blenheims; the next day another raid hit two hangars, destroying one aircraft and damaging five, without casualties. The account is a single enthusiast source and the figures are given as it states them.

In September 1940 No. 604 Squadron, a specialist night-fighter unit, received the Bristol Beaufighter, heavily armed with cannon and fitted with airborne interception radar. From late 1940 until mid-May 1941 it helped hold the night skies over southern England during the Blitz. Wikipedia counts 50 victories claimed by the squadron while at Middle Wallop, 14 of them by Flight Lieutenant John Cunningham.

Cunningham’s first radar-directed victory, a Ju 88, came on the night of 19–20 November 1940. The press explained his success with a cover story that his eyesight let him see in the dark and that carrots gave him vitamin A; the nickname ‘Cat’s Eyes’ stuck, and Cunningham accepted it as a necessary deception to hide the radar. His radar operator Jimmy Rawnsley shared all but three of his 20 victories. After the war Cunningham flew the de Havilland Comet, the world’s first jet airliner, on its first flight in 1949.

The Americans came next. From November 1943 Middle Wallop held the headquarters of IX Fighter Command, and from December the 67th Reconnaissance Group, as USAAF Station 449, flew photographic Spitfires, F-5 Lightnings and F-6 Mustangs over the French coast before D-Day. The airfield history says the group flew 83 low-level sorties photographing some 160 miles of coastline without loss, and it left for France on 4 July 1944. In January 1945 the Royal Navy took the field as HMS Flycatcher, headquarters of its mobile naval air bases; the RAF returned in 1946.

After the war Middle Wallop became the school for the Army’s air observation post pilots: Royal Artillery officers who flew light aircraft to direct gunfire. Wikipedia says No. 227 OCU moved here in 1947 (the Airshows Present history says January 1948), became the Air Observation Post School in 1950 and the Light Aircraft School in 1952. Helicopters followed: the airfield history mentions early Hoverfly, Sycamore and Dragonfly flights, and the Joint Experimental Helicopter Unit, formed here in 1955 according to the same history.

When British Army aviation became independent of the RAF on 1 September 1957 the school became the core of the new Army Air Corps, and on 1 October 1958 RAF Home Command handed the station to the Army. Through the 1960s and 1970s its instructors trained crews on the Skeeter, Sioux, Scout, Alouette, Gazelle and Lynx, the types flown in Borneo, Aden, Northern Ireland and the Falklands.

The Army Flying Museum grew beside the airfield. The museum says its collection began at RAF Andover in 1946, first opened to the public in 1974 and moved into a purpose-built hangar in 1984; Wikipedia gives 1987 as its founding date, apparently for the present institution. A 2.59 million pound refurbishment was completed in 2019, and a memorial unveiled in 2017 commemorates more than 5,000 people who died in the service of British Army flying. On 1 August 2009 the station was renamed the Army Aviation Centre.

Middle Wallop’s role today is the front line’s schoolroom. When the Ministry of Defence announced the AH-64E fleet in January 2022, it counted 165 new jobs at the Army Aviation Centre, home of the Attack Helicopter Training School, where Boeing already had more than 40 employees training crews on the older Apache AH Mk1. In March 2025 it confirmed that the operational AH-64E fleet was at Wattisham and the training fleet at Middle Wallop. Under the UK Military Flying Training System, a contract signed on 20 May 2016 named Middle Wallop, with Shawbury and Valley, for tri-service helicopter training on H135 and H145 aircraft.

The station has also become the Army’s aviation headquarters in a wider sense. The Army lists HQ Army Air Corps, the 1st Aviation Brigade headquarters, 2 and 7 Training Regiments, 5 Regiment and the reserve 6 Regiment here. 5 Regiment, which had flown surveillance aircraft and Gazelles over Northern Ireland from Aldergrove since 1979, moved here by November 2024, a year after the Gazelle was retired.

On 13 May 2024 King Charles III, who had been Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Air Corps since his years as Prince of Wales, handed the role to William, Prince of Wales, near the Middle Wallop control tower. He also unveiled a plaque for the museum’s Apache AH Mk1, ZJ224, which had flown in Afghanistan, including a rescue mission in Helmand on 15 January 2007 (Operation Glacier). The Prince then took an Apache capability flight, his first engagement as Colonel-in-Chief.