The air entrainment for avoiding cavitation damage has been widely used in long free flow tunnels. It is crucial to determine whether an aerator is needed for shorter tunnels. In this article, the bottom discharge tunnel at the Longtan Hydropower Station was involved, for which the free flow tunnel section was only 50.00 m long. The cavitation in the tunnel with and without the aerator was investigated using the physical models of the scale 1/30, through the measurements of cavitation noise. The experimental results show that it is necessary to place the aerator at the inlet of the free flow section for higher reservoir level to protect this tunnel from cavitation damage.