to 1918 The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) opened a station near Andover in August 1917 during the First World War. The station was mainly built by German prisoners of war, some of whom left their signatures in roof spaces of buildings on the station. Plans for an RFC "Training Depot Station" on the site had first been made in 1912. The station motto was Vis et armis consilioque orta (), reflecting the station's role in training aircrews, who had completed basic flying training, to learn to fly the Handley Page Type O and Airco DH.9 bombers. The first unit to occupy the station was No. 2 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping, which took up residence while the station was still under construction. Amongst squadrons formed at Andover was 106 Squadron, on 30 September 1917, who were equipped with Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 reconnaissance aircraft for army co-operation duties, being posted to Ireland in May 1918. American squadrons were also based at the airfield, as from 24 December 1917 to 6 June 1918 Andover was host to a detachments of the 13th Aero Squadron and 104th Aero Squadron of the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps. In early 1918, experiments were conducted with Handley Page Type O bombers, based at Andover and Cranwell, fitted with Radio Direction-Finding (RDF as it was called) equipment for night flying. The intention was to guide British bombers to and from Berlin, and early results led to 550 sets of RDF equipment being ordered by the United States Army Air Service, but the war ended before any operational use was made of the system. This was the first attempt to develop a long-range electronic navigation system, of a kind that is today used routinely worldwide. When the RAF Station closed in 1977 a number of artefacts from the airfield's early history and later were donated to 1213 (Andover) Squadron Air Training Corps. These included a large carved wooden copy of the RFC cap badge which was later donated to the Army Flying Museum and is now on display in its café. 1918 to 1939 Between the wars, the airfield housed a number of RAF units, including from 1919 the RAF School of Navigation, as No. 2 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping was retitled. The RAF Staff College was founded here on 1 April 1922, to provide staff training to selected officers, and eventually moved to