Qualla: RAF Nordhorn

RAF Nordhorn: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Photo-Concepte.de, CC BY-SA 4.0. For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the people of Nordhorn could tell you what the Cold War sounded like. It sounded like a Hawker Hunter or a Tornado descending over the heath, lining up on the bombing range east of town, and pulling up and away again. The flights happened almost every day. The border with communist East Germany was several hundred kilometres distant - too far, really, to be afraid of - but the sound was a constant reminder that NATO was, in fact, watching the East from this corner of Lower Saxony. The aircraft sometimes belonged to the Royal Air Force, sometimes to the Luftwaffe, sometimes to other NATO air arms. They were all here for the same patch of ground: the gunnery and bombing range that, in British paperwork, was called RAF Nordhorn.

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Image: Photo-Concepte.de | CC BY-SA 4.0

RAF Nordhorn: Wehrmacht Targets, 1933

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stubenviech, CC BY-SA 4.0. The range was not originally British. In 1933, the Wehrmacht began using the heaths east of Nordhorn for artillery target practice - the first formal military use of this stretch of moor. Twelve years later, in 1945, the property changed hands rather decisively, and the Royal Air...

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Image: Stubenviech | CC BY-SA 4.0

RAF Nordhorn: A Cold War Soundtrack

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heribert Duling (Famduling), CC BY-SA 3.0. Through the long decades of the Cold War, RAF Nordhorn became one of the busiest air-to-ground ranges in northern Europe, integrated into RAF Germany. Pilots flew in from British bases scattered across northern West Germany - and from NATO partners further afield - to practise th...

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Image: Heribert Duling (Famduling) | CC BY-SA 3.0

RAF Nordhorn: Outlasting the Wall

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heribert Duling (Famduling), CC BY-SA 3.0 de. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, much of the British military presence in Germany began to unwind. RAF stations across the British Army of the Rhine area closed or transferred. Nordhorn did not. It remained one of the few facilities the British armed forces kept in Germany...

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Image: Heribert Duling (Famduling) | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

RAF Nordhorn: A Range That Never Quite Quits

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heribert Duling (Famduling)Famduling 11:51, 20. Jun. 2010 (CEST), CC BY-SA 3.0. What strikes anyone who looks at Nordhorn now is how naturally a small, prosperous border town has absorbed all this. The bombing range is a fixture, controversial but accepted, a piece of municipal furniture that came with the postwar political settlement and never quite went aw...

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Image: Heribert Duling (Famduling)Famduling 11:51, 20. Jun. 2010 (CEST) | CC BY-SA 3.0