Qualla: RAF Cranwell

RAF Cranwell: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit College_Hall_Officers'_Mess.JPG: Greenshed derivative work: SilkTork (talk), Public domain. Above the main doors of the Officers Mess at RAF Cranwell, carved into the lintel, are two Latin words: Altium Altrix. Nurture the highest. The motto was chosen for an institution that did not exist anywhere else in the world when it was founded - a dedicated academy for training the officers of an air force. The Royal Air Force itself had only existed for eighteen months when its college opened here on 1 November 1919. There was no curriculum to copy. Britain was inventing the idea of an air force from the start, and Cranwell was inventing the idea of the officer who would lead it. Every flight commander, station commander, air marshal, and Chief of the Air Staff in RAF history since has begun their commissioned service on the flat Lincolnshire ground around this house.

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Image: College_Hall_Officers'_Mess.JPG: Greenshed derivative work: SilkTork (talk) | Public domain

RAF Cranwell: From Naval Air Station to Air Academy

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mick Lobb, CC BY-SA 2.0. The story begins not with the Royal Air Force but with the Royal Navy. In November 1915 the Admiralty requisitioned 2,500 acres of farmland from the estate of the Marquess of Bristol, on the open Lincolnshire plain near Sleaford, and turned it into a training base for the Royal N...

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Image: Mick Lobb | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Cranwell: What an Air Officer Has to Know

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charlesdrakew, CC BY-SA 3.0. What do you teach a person who is going to command in three dimensions? The RAF had to work out the answer in real time. The Modular Initial Officer Training Course runs twenty-four weeks now: leadership, physical training, military theory, fieldcraft, and the conceptual material...

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Image: Charlesdrakew | CC BY-SA 3.0

RAF Cranwell: The Roar of Training

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit --Rensi 12:54, 28. Dez. 2009 (CET), Public domain. Stand on the grass outside the officers' mess on any weekday morning and you will hear them - small turboprop trainers in the circuit, climbing and descending in the standard patterns that have not really changed since wood-and-fabric biplanes were doing the same thing on the sam...

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Image: --Rensi 12:54, 28. Dez. 2009 (CET) | Public domain

RAF Cranwell: Past, Present, Coming Years

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Atkin, CC BY-SA 2.0. The buildings tell their own history. The Sykes Building opened in 2018, named after Air-Vice Marshal Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes, a Great War pilot and politician. It supports the UK Military Flying Training System. The RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine is moving here from RAF Henlow...

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Image: Tony Atkin | CC BY-SA 2.0