Allegations of "extraordinary rendition" flights utilising UK military airfields have been widely reported for several years and the worldwide community of aviation enthusiasts – or "plane spotters" – has proved invaluable in charting their movements. The camera and the registration number on the tail never lie. Well, until the numbers are changed.
Rogue jets licensed to CIA "ghost companies" have been tracked landing at various locations, en-route between the USA, Iraq, Afghanistan and sinister "black prisons" – clandestine interrogation and torture facilities set-up after the "9/11" incidents, in the global "war on terror".
Consider the whole theme of my website, www.secret-bases.co.uk, established in 2003. Then imagine my astonishment in December 2007, when I discovered that some of my favourite research tools – Google Earth and Windows Live Local Bird's Eye aerial photography – apparently showed rendition operations being carried out at one of the UK's most important, secure and sensitive military bases. CIA caught on camera?
Be intrigued, amazed, shocked, outraged – all of the above. But above all, be entertained by the power of public domain information, available from open sources. Analyse my research findings and draw your own conclusions. Read on and enjoy.
RAF Northolt in West London, close to Heathrow International Airport, is home to the Queen's Flight (now known as No. 32 Royal Squadron) and is the official facility used by the Royal Family, the Prime Minister and VIPs within UK Government. It is also used by US Embassy staff (and one assumes by inference, CIA agents).
Northolt has an official listing of Station Flights, including the BAE 146 for His Majesty the King and three Agusta 109E helicopters for VIP travel and "communications" functions. But judging by evidence I found on Google Earth and Bird's Eye in December 2007, there are many other undisclosed airframes touching down on that tarmac.
As a high security military facility, Northolt has been chosen as the site for consolidating many other functions previously carried out at various sites spread out around London. The Ministry of Defence Estate London (MoDEL) Project is well under way and will ultimately result in many old RAF sites being sold off, with staff relocating to Northolt. Project MoDEL is being run by VSM Estates Limited – a joint venture between VINCI plc and St. Modwen Properties plc.
Another major Northolt redevelopment project is a huge new hangar type building (below) to house the British Forces Post Office (BFPO), which obviously needs to be in a very secure environment. The BFPO project is being run by Bovis Land Lease and will relocate the function from the BFPO's previous operational facility together with the Defence Courier Service based within Inglis Barracks, Mill Hill in North London, on the edge of the Hertfordshire commuter belt.
In October 2006, security at Northolt was massively upgraded with the installation of a new £1.2 million perimeter fence enhancement. It was supplied by Link Integrated Security Systems Limited based in Chesterfield, UK and ObjectVideo, Inc in Reston, Virginia, on the edge of Washington Dulles International Airport. It utilises sophisticated 24-hour motion detection sensors and video analytics software.
The press release remarks, "ObjectVideo technology also enhances the security of the USAF at Andrews Air Force Base in the United States. Andrews AFB is best known as the airfield used by the President of the United States and home base for his plane, Air Force One. The base also provides air transportation for the Vice President, the Cabinet, Members of Congress, military leaders and receives high-ranking dignitaries from around the world".
RAF Northolt is no stranger to scandal. As revealed in the Sunday Times in July 2006, large quotas of valuable landing slots had been controversially allocated to a private company, Netjets, which specialises in whisking celebrities in and out of London for their media appearances.
These invariably involve the Gulfstream executive jets, so popular with the CIA rendition agents. Could that explain away the suspicious planes on the tarmac caught on camera?
Well, Netjets is actually based over on the north east side of the Aerodrome in Hangar 311. This facility was leased out by the Ministry of Defence back in 2001, as seen in an advertisement placed in Flight International magazine in July of that year (right).
There are quite distinct public and military areas at Northolt Aerodrome. Whilst some Gulfstreams can be seen on the southern apron, associated with the Queen's Flight and some commercial operations, a much more interesting group of buildings can be spotted in the north west corner.
Some urban scale maps use the label Warehouse Hangar (right) and it is located in a highly secure military area next to the underground fuel depot. Greater detail is revealed on Ordnance Survey mapping at 1:10000 scale. Could this have been converted in recent years to act as a CIA "holding facility"? In March 2006, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in a Guardian newspaper exposé that the Ministry of Defence had finally admitted to rendition flights "passing through RAF Northolt", so perhaps we're onto something.
The Google Earth imagery I present further below is possibly as recent as 2005 or even early 2006, but not 2007 – it doesn't show any of the MoDEL building projects in progress. However, the Bird's Eyes are fairly contemporary – if you experiment with multiple angles of views, various other MoDEL construction sites can be found as well as the new BFPO. Crucially, two out of the three brand new white Agusta 109E helicopters from the No. 32 Royal Squadron appear on the Bird's Eyes. They were delivered to the base by the manufacturers in March 2006 and replaced Twin Squirrels.
On Google Earth, two Gulfstreams can be spotted on the southern apron along with a Cessna Citation – rumoured to be used by US Embassy staff in London and therefore probably CIA too.
Examine that north west corner around the "Warehouse Hangar" on Google Earth. You see a Cessna Citation, (plus a BAE 125) and shuttle coaches for transportation around the airfield. Hop over to Bird's Eye (obviously filmed at a different time and indeed date) and the shuttle buses are still there. The BAE 125 has gone, but the number of Citations has increased first to two, then to four.
Go back to Google Earth. Anything else of interest? There's one more vehicle caught on camera – an ambulance. Why would an ambulance be required at a "Warehouse Hangar" or to accompany courtesy buses? Because the staff are so clumsy and prone to serious accidents at all times? Perhaps because rendition "passengers" are routinely drugged in transit? On 4th May 2008, the Mail on Sunday picked up on my observations and featured this article in a major news story regarding the alleged rendition and torture of Binyam Mohamed.
Just before we leave that north west corner — "Special Projects Area" or "Station Flight Enclave" — there's one more exciting surprise. With considerable experimentation, I managed to obtain a Bird's Eye of Northolt's most elusive and secretive residents – a Britten-Norman Islander, used by the RAF in a classified surveillance, Communications Intelligence (COMINT) and Electronic / Electromagnetic Intelligence (ELINT) counter-terrorism role.
The details in the public domain so far, not surprisingly, have been very sketchy indeed. However, they are regularly seen circling and almost "hovering" over London at all times of the day and night – they can be used a bit like helicopters, as they have very low stall speeds.
They have been spotted in the sky at other locations across the UK at times of major security alerts, for example in July 2005 in Birmingham when the city centre was evacuated just days after the "7/7" London bombings. They are being used to intercept, monitor and interrupt the communications of "individuals deemed to pose a threat to the security of the UK".
During 2007, plane spotters based near Northolt published pictures on a forum of both Islanders fitted with their high-tech surveillance and communications equipment. The enthusiasts have been using a £380 box of tricks — the Kinetic Avionics SBS-1 Real Time Virtual Radar base station connected to PCs — to track them circling over London at 10,000 feet, the maximum altitude the Islanders can fly at because they are unpressurised.
In December 2007, the official RAF Northolt website was listing two Islanders as part of the Station Flight, but curiously the registration numbers were wrong.
The two numbers – ZH536 and ZF573 – were quoted incorrectly as ZF563 and ZH537 respectively (actual screen capture, right). Possibly just a simple innocent typographical error by the MoD webmaster, or maybe an attempt to throw inquisitive researchers "off the scent"?
Perhaps the confusion was caused by the addition in April 2008 of a third Islander, this time with the new true number ZH537, which has been spotted regularly flying into RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire.
I have occasionally tracked the Islander spy planes on my own Mode-S transponder radar screen, located within a few miles of Manchester International Airport.
In February 2007 the Mail on Sunday's Jason Lewis ran an exclusive story detailing the death in 1999 of a London "motorcycle courier driver".
He had been killed in an apparent straightforward tragic accident involving a car driving into his side and knocking him off. But the "courier" was an undercover MI5 surveillance officer targeting al-Qaeda terrorists (before the wider world had even heard of the name).
The car driver was a mysterious "Arabic looking" man who was taken to Paddington Green high security police station for questioning and later released without charge, never to be seen again. The inquest ruled the death was an accident but case files were permanently sealed under the Official Secrets Act.
The Mail on Sunday article was headlined "Britain's first victim in the war on terror" and used a photo supplied by the MI5 officer's grieving parents. It shows their son posing in a flying suit next to an anonymous "military plane". Take a look at that photo and see if you recognise it.
In August 2008, the Mail on Sunday's Jason Lewis (from November 2010 to March 2013 at the Sunday Telegraph, until January 2018 a managing director at Kroll offshoot K2 Intelligence, now running his own company International Insight) scooped another exclusive.
He detailed for the first time how the Islanders based at Northolt's Special Operations Area are being used to track suspected Taliban trainees from major UK cities.
This time, a wider clearer version of that MI5 Officer's portrait was published and showed some very distinctive hangar doors and equally recognisable patterned hardstanding tarmac.
On Saturday 27th September 2008, numerous properties in East London and Essex were raided in an anti-terrorism operation after a publisher's house in Islington, North London was firebombed. The victim was about to publish a highly controversial book detailing a fictionalised account of the Prophet Mohammed's early life – The Jewel of Medina. The skies above the raid locations were constantly patrolled by Islanders from Northolt with special eavesdropping equipment attached (exclusively pictured further below).
In February 2010 it was discovered that specially adapted Army Air Corps Gazelle helicopters in camouflage green, complete with pilot voice control software and powerful Nitesun searchlights, had joined the Islanders performing similar spy operations over densely populated areas of Manchester.
In September 2010, it was suggested that the GCHQ expert Gareth Williams – found dead in his London safe house at 36 Alderney Street, Pimlico, whilst on secondment to MI6 – had worked on interception equipment fitted to the Islander spy planes based at Northolt.
On the morning of Friday 17th January 2020 at around 9am, Heathrow Airport was suddenly shut down, all planes were blocked from landing and taking-off and the airspace above was urgently cleared of traffic. Many flights were diverted to Gatwick instead. Some planes circling Heathrow in a holding pattern were dangerously close to running out of fuel.
I suspect the culprit was a BAE 146-200 C3 (ICAO code B462) from RAF Northolt's 32 Squadron which provides executive travel for Government VIPs and members of the Royal Family.
The aircraft involved was registration ZE707 with callsign NOH11 and a military ModeS transponder code of 43C704.
I was able to track the flight in the North of England in the vicinity of Manchester Airport between 08.31 and 08.52 descending from 14,000ft down to 3,750ft when it went beyond my antenna range, presumably near London ATC. It was unclear as to what the emergency was and why the need for secrecy.
The only other military aircraft of note in the sky at the time of the Heathrow chaos were several Hawk trainer jets, a Boeing C17 Globemaster transporter (ZZ173), an Airbus KC2 Voyager (ZZ343) and a USAF Stratotanker (59-1495).
The C17 was cruising over the UK at 21,000ft. The Voyager was heading out north east but was already at 23,000ft over the North Sea by 08.40, close to Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The Stratotanker was at a steady 34,000 ft all the way between 08.40 and 09.10. So those were all ruled out from the list of potentials causing a crisis in London air traffic control.
I subsequently heard from an informant that the BAE 146's landing gear triggered a fault alarm in the cockpit and the pilot had to make several attempts to land to avert a catastrophe – both human and political – with as yet unnamed VIPs on board, reducing its airspeed each time on approach. This led to the overrun of the scheduled window and the extraordinary decision to close one of the world's busiest air traffic control zones at peak time in the morning.
An hour after the Heathrow shutdown, I again tracked the BAE-146 ZE707 between 10.05 and 10.30 climbing from 3,950ft to 18,950ft, where it went out of my reception range again, presumably heading back up north after a quick fix to a faulty sensor.
The RAF's own website describes the BAE 146's role as the transportation of "senior government ministers and Ministry of Defence personnel and, most famously, senior members of the Royal Family". If required, the 146's defensive aids suite (DAS) also offers government ministers and high-ranking military leaders protection during visits overseas where a risk to security is perceived".
So far the MoD has not officially commented on the precise nature of the incident, and of course no word on who those VIPs were.
During Summer 2017, the three elderly Northolt Islander spy planes (see previous section above) were finally put out to pasture, apparently set to enjoy a peaceful retirement from snooping up in Lanarkshire, Scotland with their original "Civvy Street" registration numbers.
CAA records reveal that the aircraft were re-registered in May, June and July 2017 to George Cormack's company Islander Aircraft Limited trading as Cormack Islander Aircraft. "ZH536" now sports "G-BSAH" (emitting ModeS code 407382), "ZH537" is now wearing "G-BJEC" (ModeS 400D24) and "ZF573" now displays "G-BJOH" (ModeS 4073DE).
Until June 2019 they were under the command of Cormack Islander Aircraft based at Cumbernauld Airport, at the side of the M80 motorway north east of Glasgow, on the former site of the Roman Fortifications along the Antonine Wall. Cormack specialises in the supply, repair, maintenance and spares provision for Britten Norman Islander airframes worldwide.
In June 2019, G-BSAH, G-BJEC and G-BJOH were all sold to Gama Aviation whose HQ is at Farnborough Airport. Additionally, Gama bought G-BIIO (Mode-S 406F42) from Cormack Islander Aircraft at Cumbernauld at the same time. G-BIIO had previously been operated by aerial surveillance and reconnaissance specialists CAE Aviation. The Gama Islanders are operated from Bournemouth Hurn Airport. Maybe the Ministry of Defence now contracts the Gama Islanders on a per-mission basis for special projects.
Keen MI5 spy plane spotters should continue to lurk around RAF Northolt. A company formed by former elite RAF pilots, 2 Excel Aviation, actually based at Sywell Aerodrome, Northamptonshire, is now performing those spooky Northolt tasks, as part of its Scimitar special projects team.
They are using Piper PA31 Navajo aircraft "G-SCIR" (ModeS 40729C), "G-SCTR" (ModeS 40029D) and "G-SCMR" (ModeS 40729E) — all registered to 2 Excel in February / March 2017. They joined regular "sneaky-beaky" craft "G-UMMI" (ModeS 400C86) which is regularly spotted with special communications equipment attachments.
In September 2021, G-UMMI even featured in a press release announcing 2-Excel's latest lucrative spying contract, in tandem with JD2E, for the MoD. From January 2022, JD2E and 2 Excel will provide Mission Aircrew training for Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) operators.
All three RAF Northolt Piper Navajo PA31 craft had been purchased by 2 Excel from Mike Jones Aircraft Sales Inc in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, America, who specialise in Colemill Panther conversions for performance and safety boosts. G-SCTR previously carried registration mark N331DB. G-SCIR had been supplied with tail number N522AW and G-SCMR had previously carried N27773.
The London Evening Standard's Business Pages reported on my findings in an article headlined "Lift Off: Home Office privatises MI5 spy plane operations".
In October 2018, it was announced by the Ministry of Defence that Lagan Aviation and Infrastructure had been awarded a £23 million contract to resurface the runway at RAF Northolt. The project will extend the life of the airfield by "ten to fifteen years". While the runway is being worked on in 2019, the military flights will operate from RAF Benson in South Oxfordshire.
In October 2011, Jason Lewis at the Sunday Telegraph used exclusive background research provided by me to expose the Metropolitan Police's secret army of spy planes – similar to the Northolt Islanders – but operating out of Farnborough and using a fake front company called Nor Leasing using a Mail Boxes Etc shop in a suburban London high street.
The Met Police added another Reims Cessna F406 Caravan II to the fleet of spy planes based at Farnborough in 2013. The two regulars G-TDSA (Mode S 405B28) and G-BVJT (Mode S 401116) have now been joined by G-UKAL (Mode S 406848), but a different front company called Aero Lease UK has been chosen for the new airframe. Showing that the Met Police haven't learned from previous lessons, they originally chose to operate from another Mail Boxes Etc shop in Camp Road, Farnborough. The registered address was switched in November 2013 to Building 84 at Cranfield University in Bedfordshire. This building is also the home of CASSIUS — the Cranfield Aerospace Special Services Integrated Unmanned Air System [PDF, 3MB].