14 Maintenance Unit and occupied the various sites originally used by RAF Kingstown's Elementary Flying Training School during the Second World War.

The site had also served for a short period in the 1930s as a civilian municipal airport for the City of Carlisle, but proved to be underused and uneconomic.

The maintenance unit was used by the RAF to store and maintain various pieces of equipment ranging from aircraft engine parts to firearms, ammunition to office furniture, aircrew clothing and small hardware items.

At night a uniformed RAF Duty Officer dealt with urgent and essential "flash" requests from operational flying stations.

Although used by the Border Flying Club as its base, the new airport proved to be underused and uneconomic so the airfield was eventually sold to the Air Ministry in 1936.

The RAF installed concrete runways, hangars, a full range of administrative buildings, and several estates of married quarter housing for officers and other ranks.

[1] The new facility came into operation in February 1941, the station designated as RAF Crosby on Eden which, following its wartime service, today serves as Carlisle Lake District Airport.

[3] As the war developed and the need for pilots increased, the EFTS expanded its operations onto several local grass fields at nearby Harker, Heathlands, Rockcliffe and Cargo.

[10] By the 1980s the headquarters site consisted of the original guard room staffed by civilian MOD Police, a helipad mainly used by the Royal Navy during aerial marine surveys of the Solway Firth, the small non-standard officers' mess with living accommodation for eight officers, the station HQ, the rifle range, a water tower, an MOD Fire Station with a single fire engine appliance and various other minor admin buildings.

RAF Carlisle would prove to be an early target for closure in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) which marked the beginning of a modernisation that moved towards a unified tri-service logistics support.

[14] During 1992 radioactive radium was discovered at the RAF Carlisle site by accident when a member of the Royal Observer Corps walked across a patch of ground testing a recently recalibrated PDRM82 geiger counter.

After further investigations it was realised that the RAF had incinerated thousands of luminous dials from the old wartime trainer aircraft in accordance with the disposal policy of the 1940s and 1950s known as "bash, bury or burn".

Since 1992, scientists have analysed up to 10,000 soil samples from the closed RAF Carlisle site and so far have published thirty separate reports.

During the Second World War the air raid warning organisation No 32 Group Carlisle Royal Observer Corps operated from a city centre building on Norfolk Road, The Laurels,[16] although it was controlled administratively from RAF Kingstown.

The foundations of the nuclear bunker can still be partially seen outlined in the concreted yard, which also contains the Air Training Corps hut during recent further development of the site.

[20] The Royal Air Force still retains close links with the local area, through RAF Spadeadam, the only electronic warfare range still in the UK and one of two in Europe, which holds an annual thanksgiving service in Carlisle Cathedral on Battle of Britain Sunday.