RAF Flowerdown
Encyclopedia
RAF Flowerdown was an RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 station situated in Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

The RFC Wireless School moved from Farnborough to Flowerdown, later RAF Flowerdown in 1919. The apprentice training school moved from Flowerdown to Cranwell in 1929 and the RNAS moved into Flowerdown which remained as a wireless station until 1956. It was never an airfield but it was bombed twice in one week.

In 1956 the site was taken over by GCHQ's Composite Signals Organisation as a large HF listening station. It closed in the late 1970s.

During the second world war, Flowerdown was one of a number of listening stations around the country that fed information into Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...

with staff working 12 hour shifts listening to Morse code which was then used by Colossus to decipher the German codes.
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