A brief history of RAF Portreath

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The area on which the base is built is known as Nancakuke common, with a history of farming and extensive mining activity, both open cast and shaft.

In Victorian times the area was used as a rifle range.

The land was requisitioned by the government in 1940 and the RAF base was opened in 1941.

RAF Portreath served as a fighter base and was home to many squadrons equipped with spitfires, hurricanes and typhoons. It also played host to the rarer heavy fighter squadrons whose aircraft were Beaufighters, Mosquitoes and the very rare Westland Whirlwind. These were twin Rolls Rolls Peregrine engined aircraft armed with four 20mm Hispano cannons capable of carrying bombs and rockets.

From their base at RAF Portreath these squadrons defended the western approaches to Britain out as far as the Bay of Biscay. Attacks were carried out on enemy aircraft, U boats and the high speed E boats that threatened allied shipping.

During the build up to D day, aircraft from RAF Portreath played a huge role in softening up the German defences along the French coast and also carried out vital diversionary raids into Northern France, to throw the Wehrmacht planners off the scent and disguise the possibility of the impending spearhead.

Away from the war in Europe, RAF Portreath also played a key role in the theatres of Asia and North Africa. The base became an overseas air despatch unit and the final hopping point for fighters, bombers and transporters leaving Europe to continue fighting the Germans and the Japanese. Hundreds of aircraft passed through the base in this time including Halifax bombers, horsa gliders, hudsons, Dakotas, Marylands and marauders.

Immediately after the war, the base was used as transport command briefing school and the outbuildings were used to house the Polish resettlement air corps.

At the height of the cold war, RAF Portreath was selected as a control and reporting post within the UK Air Control and Surveillance System (UK ASACS). This was the system that monitored and controlled the entire airspace around the UK and linked into the wider NATO defence network. Within the system, each base had the capability to take over the function of others in the event of the ultimate threat at that time, which was a nuclear strike by the Warsaw pact against NATO.

Fortunately, that threat was never realized and with the gradual thaw in relations between East and West which culminated in the fall of the Berlin wall, the operation at RAF Portreath was scaled down.

Currently the base serves as a remote radar site and feeds data to RAF Boulmer /RAF Scampton.