Ten years after the Wright Brothers first flew in 1903, the British government decided that the Ness would be the site for a new top-secret facility whose job was to work out how best to use aircraft in warfare. Chinese labourers drained the marshes and built the sea wall, and 70 years of top-secret research followed the arrival of the Royal Flying Corps" Armament and Experimental Flying Section in 1915. Its secret history largely ended with departure of the Atomic Weapons Laboratory in 1971 and the sudden closure of Cobra Mist in 1973.