RAF Wickenby
England — County: Lincolnshire
About
RAF Wickenby lay on rising ground about eight miles north-east of Lincoln and opened in September 1942 as a No. 1 Group bomber station. Its first and longest-serving unit was No. 12 Squadron, which began operations with Vickers Wellingtons and soon re-equipped with the Avro Lancaster. In November 1943 the squadron’s ‘C’ Flight was split off to form a second Lancaster unit, No. 626 Squadron, and the two flew side by side from Wickenby for the rest of the war.
From the airfield the squadrons took part in the great night battles against Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich and the Ruhr, in the costly Mailly-le-Camp raid, and in mine-laying and the Manna food drops over the occupied Netherlands. The price was heavy: more than a thousand men who flew from Wickenby were killed.
After the war the airfield was used for a decade by maintenance units dismantling surplus ordnance, then closed in 1956. It later reopened as a civil aerodrome, which still operates today. At its entrance a memorial topped by a sculpture of the falling Icarus commemorates the men of Nos. 12 and 626 Squadrons.
Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including Bomber County Aviation Resource — Wickenby airfield history and Wikipedia: RAF Wickenby. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.
Home to
- No. 12 Squadron — 1 Group
- No. 626 Squadron — 1 Group
People connected to this base
21 persons cross-referenced to this airfield — through a posting here, a squadron based here, or aircrew who flew from it.
| Name | Rank | Connection | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bayley, Richard Frederick | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Breck, Alan William | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Burnham, Wilfred Henry | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Butterworth, Douglas | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Cable, H Bernard | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Cook, Alastair John | Flight Lieutenant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Cotton Minchin, Christopher Humphrey | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Cryer, Alan | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Davis, George Edward | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Franklin, Brian | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Horstmann, Ronald Leslie | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| McCaffray, Thomas | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| McInnes, Jack Ernest | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Morrey, Charles Edward | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Mouchet, Maurice Rene Nicolas | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Pridmore, Walter Noel | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Salt, Bernard | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Summerscale, Kenneth Launcelot | Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Thomas, Arthur Glyndwyr | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Timperley, Robert | Pilot Officer | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |
| Weston, Alexander Harold | Flight Sergeant | Aircrew (squadron based here) | — |