On 26 March 2025, the Royal Air Force began the final farewell tour of the Puma HC Mk2, with aircraft departing from RAF Benson on a nationwide series of appearances ahead of the type’s formal retirement on 31 March.
The occasion marked the beginning of the end for one of the RAF’s most familiar and adaptable support helicopters, closing more than five decades of operational service. It was both a farewell in motion and a public acknowledgement of an aircraft that had served quietly, constantly and with remarkable flexibility, notably with 33 Squadron and 230 Squadron over the course of its RAF career.
A Long-Serving Workhorse
For generations of RAF personnel, the Puma was not a symbolic aircraft admired from afar but a practical machine known for being available, useful and dependable. Across decades of service, it became closely associated with tactical transport, the movement of troops and equipment, training, domestic resilience tasks and operations overseas. The Puma’s value lay in its versatility. It could support routine tasks one week and demanding operational commitments the next, often in difficult environments where speed, lift and flexibility mattered more than spectacle.
That sort of service rarely produces a single defining image. Instead, it builds a reputation through repetition: sorties completed, personnel carried safely, urgent requirements met, and missions adapted to changing circumstances. The Puma’s long career reflects that kind of steady contribution. It occupied an important middle ground in RAF capability, bridging the space between large transport platforms and more specialised rotary assets.
Why the Farewell Mattered
The farewell tour from RAF Benson was more than a ceremonial gesture. It recognised the bond between the aircraft, the stations that had operated it and the many communities that had seen it in the skies over Britain for decades. Retirement programmes often involve quiet administrative milestones, but a tour allows a service to say goodbye properly. It gives current stations, aircrew and maintainers who had shaped the type’s long RAF life.
End of an era
The retirement of the Puma HC Mk2 marks more than the withdrawal of a single helicopter type. It represents the end of a particular strand of RAF rotary-wing continuity that stretched across very different eras of service. Over more than 54 years, the Puma adapted to changing doctrine, changing theatres and changing operational expectations while remaining recognisably the same useful, hard-worked aircraft.
For that reason, the farewell flight from RAF Benson deserves notice in its own right. It marked the closing public chapter of a long and valuable RAF career. The Puma may not always have occupied the spotlight, but its retirement is significant precisely because it leaves behind such a broad record of practical service, reliability and operational usefulness.