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No. 232 Operational Conversion Unit RAF

military unit

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2025
Entity authorityQ96395950 ↗
Source-derived summary

No. 232 Operational Conversion Unit was an Operational conversion unit of the Royal Air Force which existed between 1955 and 1986

First formation

The unit was first formed at RAF Gaydon (now Jaguar Land Rover Gaydon Centre) on 21 February 1955 (shortly after Gaydon reopened following expansion) operating a number of aircraft including English Electric Canberra T.4s, Vickers Valiant B.1s and Handley Page Victor B.1 & B.2s (two of the three V bombers) and was disbanded still at Gaydon with the Victor element becoming the Tanker Training Flight.

History of the Tanker Training Flight

Formed at RAF Marham operating various marks of the Victor and a de Havilland Canada DHC-1 Chipmunk, being disbanded on 13 October 1969 becoming the Victor Training Unit.

Second formation

232 OCU was reformed at RAF Marham on 6 February 1970 by merging the Victor (B.2) Training Flight and the Victor Training Unit and was disbanded on 4 April 1986 still at Marham.

History of the Victor (B.2) Training Flight

Formed at RAF Cottesmore (now Kendrew Barracks) on 1 April 1962, operating Victor B.2's, disbanded eight years later at RAF Wittering.

History of the Victor Training Unit

Formed at RAF Cottesmore during September 1961, operating B.2's, disbanded less than a year still at Cottesmore.

References

Citations

Bibliography

Lake, A (1999). Flying units of the RAF. Shrewsbury: Airlife. ISBN 1-84037-086-6.

Editorial summary

“No. 232 Operational Conversion Unit RAF” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Operational, Conversion and Unit can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 1986, 1969, 1970—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Operational, Conversion and Unit.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“No. 232 Operational Conversion Unit RAF” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Operational, Conversion and Unit provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q96395950. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1955, 1986, 1969 and 1970.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “No. 232 Operational Conversion Unit 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.