No. 16 Squadron RAF
squadron of the Royal Air Force
Number 16 Squadron, nicknamed 'the Saints', is a flying squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) which provides elementary flying training and operates the Grob Tutor T1. It is based at RAF Wittering, Cambridgeshire, England.
The squadron formed as a part of Royal Flying Corps in 1915, at Saint-Omer, France, to carry out a mixture of offensive patrolling and reconnaissance, and was disbanded in 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War. The squadron reformed as part of the RAF in 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, operating predominately in the bomber role. Equipped with the Tornado GR1 from 1984, the squadron took part in the Gulf War in the early 1990s. It was reformed in November 1991 as the operational conversion unit for the SEPECAT Jaguar, until the Jaguar's imminent withdrawal from service in 2005. No. 16 Squadron reformed again and took on its current role in 2008.
History
First World War (1915–1919)
The squadron was formed at Saint-Omer, France on 10 February 1915, from flights split off from No.
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This entry incorporates text from “No. 16 Squadron RAF” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.