RAF Cleave

Royal Air Force Cleave or more simply RAF Cleave is a former Royal Air Force station located 4.2 miles (7 kilometres) north of Bude in Cornwall, England, which was operational from 1939 until 1945.

1 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit RAF (1 AACU) with the Westland Wallace, and a naval steam catapult was soon erected near the cliffs for the pilotless Queen Bee aircraft due to be stationed there.

Aircraft were initially housed in temporary Bessonneau hangars (type H of World War I vintage), and later replaced by more permanent structures.

In December 1943, the four flights were amalgamated into 639 Squadron, which served at Cleave for the remainder of the war.

Apart from an undisturbed piece of the grass runway to the north, a very short section of concrete perimeter track, and a few of the married quarters accommodation on Cleave Crescent, the site has been almost completely re-modelled as GCHQ Bude.

Remains of an RAF Cleave gun emplacement, with the modern satellite dishes of GCHQ Bude behind