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RAF Cluntoe, near Ardboe in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, was one of several wartime airfields built to support the expanding Allied air presence in the region. Construction began in December 1940 but was not completed until July 1942. Like many new stations, it was planned with an ambitious training role in mind, but the pace of events and shifting priorities meant that, on opening, it initially served largely as an emergency landing ground. Even that ‘quiet’ function mattered: in wartime, a safe runway in the right place could save crews and aircraft forced down by weather, mechanical problems or battle damage while moving along ferry routes and training circuits.
Cluntoe’s importance increased when it transferred to the United States Army Air Forces on 30 August 1943 and became USAAF Station 238. Northern Ireland played a strategic role for the Americans as a staging area and training environment, and Cluntoe was developed into a combat crew replacement and training hub. In late 1943 a Combat Crew Replacement Center was established to train and process bomber crews. While the station itself was not launching regular combat raids over Europe in the way English heavy bomber bases did, it contributed to the broader Allied air campaign by ensuring a steady flow of trained, standardised crews ready for assignment.
The training conducted under American control included heavy bomber crew preparation, with aircraft such as B-24 Liberators being introduced alongside other types used for instruction and crew coordination. Crew replacement centres focused on the practicalities of combat readiness: navigation and formation discipline, gunnery procedures, emergency drills, and the teamwork required to operate large aircraft safely. For many airmen, a place like Cluntoe was where training stopped feeling theoretical and started feeling like preparation for the real thing.
In November 1944 USAAF activity at Cluntoe ended and the airfield returned to RAF control, closing in June 1945. The post-war story shows another common pattern: refurbishment and reactivation for training during changing geopolitical circumstances, followed by final closure once the need diminished. The site later became an industrial and business area, with fragments of wartime infrastructure often surviving longer than expected in rural Northern Ireland.
- Primary wartime role: initially emergency and support use; later USAAF training and crew replacement as Station 238.
- Key wartime transition: transferred to USAAF on 30 August 1943; USAAF operations ended in November 1944.
- Typical aircraft association: heavy bomber training, including B-24 Liberator, alongside station and training aircraft.
Cluntoe’s Second World War contribution can be easy to overlook because it was not a famous combat base. Yet the Allied air war depended on training capacity as much as operational sorties. In that sense, Cluntoe was part of the machinery that turned industrial output and manpower into effective air power, using the relative safety and space of Northern Ireland to prepare crews for the more dangerous skies further east.