Nonstop flight route between Lakenheath, England, United Kingdom and Tampa, Florida, United States:

About this route:

A direct, nonstop flight between RAF Lakenheath (LKZ), Lakenheath, England, United Kingdom and MacDill Air Force Base (MCF), Tampa, Florida, United States would travel a Great Circle distance of 4,436 miles (or 7,139 kilometers).

A Great Circle is the shortest distance between 2 points on a sphere. Because most world maps are flat (but the Earth is round), the route of the shortest distance between 2 points on the Earth will often appear curved when viewed on a flat map, especially for long distances. If you were to simply draw a straight line on a flat map and measure a very long distance, it would likely be much further than if you were to lay a string between those two points on a globe. Because of the large distance between RAF Lakenheath and MacDill Air Force Base, the route shown on this map most likely appears curved because of this reason.

Try it at home! Get a globe and tightly lay a string between RAF Lakenheath and MacDill Air Force Base. You'll see that it will travel the same route of the red line on this map!

Departure Airport Information:

Arrival Airport Information:

Facts about RAF Lakenheath (LKZ):

• The furthest airport from RAF Lakenheath (LKZ) is Chatham Islands (CHT), which is located 11,827 miles (19,034 kilometers) away in Waitangi, Chatham Islands, New Zealand.
• In 1940, the Air Ministry selected Lakenheath as an alternative for RAF Mildenhall and used it as a decoy airfield.
• In response to the threat by the Soviet Union, by the 1948 Berlin blockade, President Truman decided to realign USAFE into a permanent combat-capable force.
• RAF Lakenheath, and nearby, RAF Mildenhall, are the two main U.S.
• The increasing tension of the Cold War lead to a re-evaluation of these deployments, and by 1953 SAC bombers began to move its heavy bomb groups further west, behind RAF fighter forces, to RAF Brize Norton, RAF Greenham Common, RAF Upper Heyford and RAF Fairford, while its shorter-range B-47 were sent to East Anglia.
• The closest airport to RAF Lakenheath (LKZ) is RAF Mildenhall (MHZ), which is located only 4 miles (7 kilometers) SW of LKZ.

Facts about MacDill Air Force Base (MCF):

• The closest airport to MacDill Air Force Base (MCF) is Peter O. Knight Airport (TPF), which is located only 6 miles (10 kilometers) NE of MCF.
• The furthest airport from MacDill Air Force Base (MCF) is Shark Bay Airport (MJK), which is located 11,436 miles (18,405 kilometers) away in Monkey Mia, Western Australia, Australia.
• Two secondary Army Airfields, Brooksville Army Airfield and Hillsborough Army Airfield were built and opened in early 1942 to support the flight operations of MacDill and Drew Fields.
• Air defense of the Tampa Bay area was the mission of the 53d Pursuit Group, established at MacDIll on 15 January 1941.
• The 29th Bombardment Group was moved to MacDill from Langley Field, Virginia on 21 May 1940.
• In addition to being known as "MacDill Air Force Base", another name for MCF is "MacDill AFB".
• Also located at MacDill are a division of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Joint Communications Support Element, the Florida Air National Guard's 290th Joint Communications Support Squadron, the Navy Reserve Forces Command's Navy Operational Support Center Tampa, the US Army's 297th Military Intelligence Battalion, the Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory, activities of the U.S.
• In late 1943, when Second Air Force began transitioning to B-29 Superfortress training, the B-17 mission returned to MacDill which continued through the end of World War II.