Qualla: RAF Cosford

RAF Cosford: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The joy of all things, CC BY-SA 4.0. Amy Johnson, the most famous female aviator of pre-war Britain, used to land at Cosford. She was flying for the Air Transport Auxiliary, the civilian ferry pool that delivered new aircraft from factories to squadrons during the Second World War. Cosford was the place she brought Spitfires from, in twos and threes, and the place she brought damaged bombers back to for repair. The grass strip was a mudbath in winter and an obstacle course of taxiing trainers in summer. She did this run more than once before her own ferry flight ended in 1941 in the Thames Estuary in circumstances that have never been fully explained. Cosford has been a working RAF station ever since: nearly nine decades, no fighter squadrons, just a quiet steady factory of trained airmen.

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Image: The joy of all things | CC BY-SA 4.0

RAF Cosford: Built in a Hurry, 1938

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathanrowley, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cosford opened in 1938 as an aircraft maintenance, storage and technical training station, part of the rapid expansion of the RAF as Hitler's intentions became impossible to ignore. The site was in Donington parish, but to avoid confusion with a nearby army depot the new station ...

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Image: Jonathanrowley | CC BY-SA 4.0

RAF Cosford: The Ferry Pool and the Hospital

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Kidd, CC BY-SA 2.0. No 9 Maintenance Unit arrived in March 1939 and within months was preparing Spitfires for the squadrons. No 12 Ferry Pool ATA was formed at Cosford, and its pilots, many of them women, flew brand-new fighters out to operational airfields and brought damaged or obsolete aircraft b...

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Image: Roger Kidd | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Cosford: The Indoor Track and the U-Turn

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mickie collins, CC BY-SA 2.0. Generations of RAF Boy Entrants, teenage technical apprentices, were trained at Cosford in the 1950s and 1960s. The station's enormous indoor sports complex, built around a banked indoor running track, became famous nationally through televised athletics championships in the 1960...

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Image: mickie collins | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Cosford: Walking the Museum

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Æthelred, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cosford is also home to a major branch of the Royal Air Force Museum. The collection here is the strongest in the country for research and development aircraft, including one of two surviving prototypes of the BAC TSR-2, the multi-role combat aircraft that Harold Wilson's governm...

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Image: Æthelred | CC BY-SA 3.0

RAF Cosford: The Airshow

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ozz13x, CC BY 2.0. Following the closure of RAF Leuchars and the runway resurfacing at RAF Waddington, Cosford now hosts the only Royal Air Force airshow officially supported by the RAF in Britain. The first show was proposed in 1978 and the event has run annually ever since, with one exception: 20...

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Image: ozz13x | CC BY 2.0