RAE Bedford

RAE Bedford
RAE Bedford
AMSL	289 ft / 88 m
Coordinates	52°13′47″N 000°28′29″W / 52.22972°N 0.47472°W
Map
	EGVW Location in Bedfordshire
Runways

RAE Bedford was a research site of the Royal Aircraft Establishment between 1946 and 1994. It was located near the village of Thurleigh, north of the town of Bedford in England and was the site of aircraft experimental development work.

In the book "A Short Illustrated History of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Bedford", author Arthur Pearcy writes: "(RAE Bedford is) the finest research and development establishment outside the U.S.A."

Starting in 1946, construction work began to turn the wartime

ski jump' later fitted to some aircraft carriers

was also developed. One local road was put in a cutting for a runway to be put above it, linking the Airfield site to the wind-tunnel site about a mile and a half away, although ultimately this was never carried out. The runway is some 10,500 ft long, and some 300 ft wide and as of June 2011 is used by a number of car storage companies.

Naval Air Department and the BEA Helicopters Experimental Unit was here at some point.[1]

The airfield was decommissioned in February 1994

QinetiQ from mid-2001 onwards). As of early 2007, QinetiQ have sold their remaining stake in the Bedford Airfield site (as well as the nearby 'Wind Tunnel' site) and are planning to relocate the remaining staff to Farnborough in early 2008, finally ending the site's long association with military aviation.^{[needs update}

]

The airfield was closed officially in March 1994 and sold in 1996

Farnborough

as well as Bedford.

The wind tunnel site is now the Twinwoods Business Park and some of the buildings are in commercial use. Red Bull Racing use the remaining horizontal wind tunnel and Twinwoods Adventure use the vertical wind tunnel, previously the Vertical Spinning Tunnel (VST) for indoor skydiving.

The VST was converted in 2005 by Bodyflight to be the first indoor skydiving wind tunnel in the UK, and at 16.4 ft in diameter remains the largest. On 1 March 2019, Historic England listed the VST as Grade 2 due to its historic and architectural interest.[3] The rest of the building was converted in 2007 and is used by Twinwoods Adventure as a multi-activity centre.

Another building on the site is the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre.