RAF Holbeach

RAF Holbeach also Air Weapons Range (AWR) Holbeach is a Royal Air Force air weapons training range situated between Boston and King's Lynn in Gedney Drove End on The Wash, in Lincolnshire, eastern England. Most of the range, including the control tower and four observation towers are in Gedney, but it does overlap with Holbeach to the west. On UK Civil Aviation Authority issued aeronautical charts the military danger area is found marked and identified by the code WRDA D207/II or the ICAO code EGD-207 (Weapons Range Danger Area or United Kingdom Danger, 207, the danger altitude is usually up to twenty-three thousand feet AMSL).

History
The range opened in 1926 as an air gunnery range attached to and established by R.A.F. Practice Camp Sutton Bridge (later named RAF Sutton Bridge). On 27 September 1926 the range saw its first biplane "customers" firing and dropping bombs over the area formally known as "Holbeach Air Gunnery and Bombing Range", and colloquially simply as Holbeach Marsh Range.

During the late 1950s, when RAF Sutton Bridge was placed on a Care and Maintenance role, the coastal marshland air gunnery range was renamed to RAF Holbeach Bombing Range and it became later parented to RAF Marham as an Air Weapons Range (AWR) within RAF Strike Command. On 1 April 2006 control was transferred to the Ministry of Defence (Defence Estates East) and the range is now administered by Defence Training Estates (East) from their headquarters at West Tofts Camp near Thetford.

Structure
The station's badge features a vertical sword through a crown. The motto is Defend and Strike.

Facilities
Extending over an area of 3,875 hectares, which includes 3,100 hectares of intertidal mudflats and 775 hectares of salt marsh, the air weapons range provides facilities for RAF and NATO-allied aircraft to practice dropping bombs and firing their aircraft weapons, including pre-deployment training. Since 1993 this has included night bombing and helicopter operations. The range facilities are not only used by airforce squadrons stationed in the United Kingdom but also fly over directly from airbases located throughout Europe. An assortment of range targets, 8 in total, include several retired merchant vessels (ships) which have been beached on the sands of The Wash for this purpose. Observation towers parallel to the target line are manned and allow the fall of aircraft ordnance to be calculated for accuracy by means of triangulation. The range includes a helicopter landing pad near the main control tower and since 2010 a new range headquarters building. At the present time aircraft types such as the Tornado GR4, Eurofighter Typhoon, USAF F-15Es (from 48th Fighter Wing), USAF A-10 Thunderbolt, Hawk Trainer and Apache helicopters can be seen operating on the range at various times of the day, including on occasions Merlin, HH-60G Pave Hawk (from 56th Rescue Squadron) and Puma HC helicopters.

Strafing
RAF Holbeach also has facilities for scoring strafing runs. The strafing targets are a number of three-metre square net with an orange bullseye made by weaving plastic strips through the chicken-wire net. The Strafe Scoring detects the X-Y position of the projectile from the acoustic signature of the supersonic shock wave. This result is sent by radio to the control tower, where it is displayed to the Air Traffic Controller for relaying to the pilot. The range also has semi-automatic bomb and rocket scoring systems.