In the last months of World War I it controlled RAF and Australian Flying Corps (AFC) fighter squadrons.

[1][2] In June 1940, a RAF Radio Counter-Measures (RCM) unit was formed at a requisitioned country hotel, Aldenham Lodge, in Radlett, Hertfordshire, to provide electronic countermeasures (ECM) and intelligence on enemy radio/radar systems.

[4] The main role of RCM/80 Wing initially was jamming the German radio navigation system Knickebein, which assisted Luftwaffe bombers raiding targets in the UK.

The technical design of countermeasures was handled by a section under Dr Robert Cockburn at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Swanage, Dorset.

80 Wing was able to add supersonic modulation to its jammers, but was briefed not to employ this countermeasure until listening stations had confirmed that the Luftwaffe was indeed using the new technique.

Jones, estimated that the delay in allowing 80 Wing to begin jamming cost about 400 lives and another 600 serious injuries, while Anti-Aircraft Command was forced to redeploy hundreds of guns to cover potential Baedeker targets.

Later, in 1944 an 80 Wing unit landed in Normandy a week or more after D-Day and followed the successful invasion force through Northern France into Belgium.

Their mission then was to establish radio frequencies it was thought being used to guide German V Flying Bombs and to destroy the signals -- one of various efforts made at the time to counter the V missiles used against Britain and later against targets in France and Belgium.