Mendlesham Airfield Guide

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Mendlesham Airfield

Mendlesham Airfield is a former RAF and USAAF station used during World War ll and located five and a half miles east of Stowmarket in Suffolk, but not actually in the parish of Mendlesham. The airfield was active between 1943 and 1954 and was quickly given over to mixed use as an industrial estate and as agricultural land, which remain the principal activities on the site today. A T2 hangar still exists and is in use as farming storage but there is no evidence of other buildings or the wartime control tower. A faint outline of the original perimeter track is visible by air.

A bronze memorial plaque was paid for by the 34th Bombardment Group and erected in 1949, but it was stolen from its site adjacent to the A140 road in 2010. A fundraising appeal to replace it managed to secure its £35,000 target in 2014, which enabled local carver Mark Bury to create a new memorial stone, with sufficient funds remaining to also pay for future maintenance and security.

History of Mendlesham Airfield

The Mendlesham Airfield was constructed during 1943 and opened in late December. But it was not until February 1944 that it was used for active flights. Three RAF fighter squadrons were briefly stationed at Mendlesham as part of the 134 (Czech) airfield. These were the No. 310 flying Supermarine Spitfire LFIXs, No. 312 flying Spitfire LFIXbs and No. 313 flying Spitfire IXs. These were all manned by Czechoslovakian pilots but the squadrons were relocated to RAF Rochford and had all moved out by April 1944.

In March 1944 the airfield was allocated to the USAAF 8th Airforce and designated as Station 156. It became the headquarters for the 93d Combat Bombardment wing and the 3d Bombardment division. The first occupants were the 34th Bombardment Group (Heavy) from Blythe in California. They flew Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses and Consolidated B-24 Liberators.

There were 170 operations directed from the airfield during World War ll and 283 airmen involved in them were killed in action. At its height the airfield hosted 2972 personnel and had capacity for housing 50 bombers. The operations carried out from Mendlesham included helping to prepare

for the Normandy invasion by bombing airfields in France and Germany and attacking coastal defences in support of the June landings. The 34th Bomb group also supported ground forces in France in July by striking weapon sites and gun emplacements.

Between October 1944 and February 1945 the airfield was primarily used for strategic bombardment raids, including marshalling yards, oil refineries, factories and airfields in Ludwigshafen, Hamm, Osnabrück, Darmstadt, Bielefeld, Merseburg, Hamburg, Misburg, Berlin, Dalteln, Hanover, Münster, Neumünster, and Frankfurt. The 34th Bomb Group also supported ground forces in the Battle of the Bulge from December 1944 to January 1945.

Before and after VE Day, the airfield supported troops in the Netherlands and Germany but on 28th August 1945 the 34th Bomb Group returned to the US and was disbanded. The airfield site was used by the RAF’s No. 94 Maintenance Unit as ammunition storage for a period after the war, but was declared inactive in 1954.

Runways

There were originally three hard-surfaced runways at RAF Mendlesham laid-out in a triangle. Two of the runways measured 1280 x 46 yards, while the other measured 1829 x 46 yards. The former runways are all grassed-over now, although a small hard surface section of one runway is exposed and visible, and the outline of all the runways are faintly visible by air today. Also, one grassed portion of another runway has occasionally been used in recent years by microlight pilots and a hang-gliding club.

Please remember that this is just a simple guide to Mendlesham Airfield. If you’re planning to land here, you must conduct thorough research and get permission beforehand. Any pilot or passengers flying to Mendlesham Airfield do so at their own risk.

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