No. 16 Squadron RAF
No. 16 Squadron RAF
Royal Flying Corps (RFC):
10 February 1915 – 1 April 1918
Royal Air Force (RAF):
1 April 1918 – 31 December 1919
1 April 1924 – 1 June 1957
1 March 1958 – 6 June 1972
8 January 1973 – 29 February 1984
1 March 1984 – 11 September 1991
1 November 1991 – 11 March 2005
1 October 2008 – present
United Kingdom
Elementary flying training
'The Saints'[1]
- Western Front (1915–1918)
- Neuve Chappelle (1915)
- Loos (1915)
- Somme (1916)*
- Arras (1917)*
- Ypres (1917)*
- France and Low Countries (1939–1940)
- Dunkirk (1940)*
- Fortress Europe (1941–1944)
- France and Germany (1944–1945)
- Normandy (1944)*
- Arnhem (1944)*
- Ruhr (1942–1945)
- Gulf (1991)
Two keys in saltire. The badge symbolises army co-operation duties. The keys indicate the unlocking of the enemy's secrets; the gold key by day, the black key by night. Approved by King Edward VIII in November 1936.
Number 16 Squadron Royal Air Force, nicknamed 'the Saints', is a flying squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) who currently provide elementary flying training (EFT) with the Grob Tutor T1, presently based at RAF Wittering, an RAF airbase in Cambridgeshire, England.[3]
It originally formed as a squadron of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) on 10 February 1915, at Saint-Omer, France, to carry out a mixture of offensive patrolling and reconnaissance, and was disbanded in 1919 with the end of the First World War. The squadron reformed as part of the recently formed Royal Air Force (RAF) on 1 April 1924, and again took on a reconnaissance role which it continued throughout the Second World War. Post-war, the squadron was disbanded and reformed several times, and was converted to a bomber squadron. Equipped with the Tornado GR1 from 1984, the squadron took part in the Gulf War in 1990. It was again disbanded in September 1991, before reforming in November 1991 as the operational conversion unit (OCU) for the Jaguar. With the Jaguar's imminent withdrawal from service, the squadron disbanded once more in 2005. No. 16 Squadron reformed again and took on its current role on 1 October 2008.