RAF Horsham St Faith. Returned to the Shap POW camp to spend 28 days in solitary, both airmen were then shipped to more secure confinement in Canada. A change of use During the 1950s the station was reactivated, re-designated as RAF Carlisle, and retasked as No 14 Maintenance Unit, the RAF's most northerly storage facility in England. The original RAF Kingstown site was established as the station headquarters and the runways were removed. The ballast from them was used in the foundations for a major building programme on the satellite sites of Harker, Heathlands, Rockcliffe and Cargo; hangars, storage buildings and administration offices were built there. In 1957, RAF Carlisle became the parent administrative station to the new missile testing establishment at the nearby satellite station of RAF Spadeadam on the remote Cumberland moorland. Spadeadam no longer tests ballistic missiles and remains today as the RAF's electronic warfare training and testing range. By the 1980s the headquarters site consisted of the original guard room manned 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. The station was unusual within the RAF as there were no other ranks or NCOs stationed at RAF Carlisle, only a small cadre of 12 - 15 RAF Supply Branch officers who controlled a civilian workforce of storekeepers and warehousemen. RAF Carlisle was just one in a chain of several Maintenance Units forming RAF Support Command, later to become RAF Logistics Command in 1994. Logistics Command was faced with a contracting air force that had fewer airfields, fewer aircraft, and fewer personnel. The logical answer was a reduction in the number of maintenance units. 14 MU was the farthest flung location in the UK, now isolated with most northern RAF stations already closed. 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. Final closure After three years of closure threats by the Ministry of Defence and extended negotiations with Carlisle Council, the RAF Carlisle base was finally closed in September 1996, and stood unused for several