The Fat Alberts are long gone and uniforms have changed, but RAF Lyneham still flies high in the memory of people who live near the historic base.

It opened as a maintenance unit on May 18 as the Second World War was really getting going. Four months later it suffered its first casualties – five civilian workmen killed in an enemy bombing.

At the end of the decade the first permanent barrack blocks were built to replace the collection of basic huts.

By the scorching summer of 1976 it had become the largest operational RAF base with the arrival of Number 70 Squadron and its Hercules transport aircraft.

The Fat Alberts stayed for the next 35 years, becoming a familiar sight in the North Wiltshire skies. Over the years the station’s crews were involved in some of the world’s biggest news events, from ferrying supplies for British forces fighting the Falklands War in 1982 to transporting food and medicines as part of the Ethiopian famine relief effort.

The world’s press descended on the base when Beirut hostages Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Jackie Mann were brought back to the UK.

A Lyneham Herc flew a lead-lined coffin to Paris in 1997 after the death of Princess Diana.

In later years the station was a vital part of the allied efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It did not come through unscathed. In January 2005 it suffered the devastating loss of 10 crew members when Hercules XV179 was shot down.

Two years later Lyneham took on the sombre role of repatriating fallen military personnel. Images of soldiers carefully carrying the coffins of their comrades down the ramps of a C-17 went around the world. A total of 345 were repatriated between 2007 and August 2011.

By then the base was heading for closure. The last of its Hercules fleet had taken off for a new home at Brize Norton and flown a goodbye lap around the towns and villages that had become so used to hearing and seeing the aircraft.

Flying operations stopped that September and the RAF handed over the keys at the end of December 2012 as the site began its transformation into an MOD college of technical training for the army.