Sir – Your correspondent Margaret Bulleyment, former host nation co-ordinator at Upper Heyford/Croughton American High School, implies that I am an idiot not to realise that RAF Croughton and RAF Barford St John are British, “as the name implies”.

Well, it was British once: the RAF station was built in 1938 and known as RAF Brackley, changing its name to RAF Croughton during the war, in 1941, when it was mainly manned by Commonwealth personnel. There was no flying after 1946, when it was used as a munitions dump until January 1951.

Then the USAF took over. It is still called RAF Croughton, but it is an American communications base, home to the 422nd Air Base Group, part of the 501st Combat Support Wing.

Its mission is to provide first-class global communications and to support NATO, US European Command, US Central Command, Air Force Special Operations Command, US Department of State operations and Ministry of Defense operations.

It maintains direct communication with the US Drone Base Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the country between Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea, from where US drones operate over Yemen and other countries in north Africa. Information from drone flights is analysed in Croughton and elsewhere and can be used to direct drone strikes. I wonder why they prefer to call it Royal Air Force Croughton?

Irene Gill, Oxford