RAF Grimsby (waltham)

RAF Grimsby, more commonly known to those who served there as Waltham after the neighbouring village, was a Lincolnshire bomber airfield that became operational in November 1941. Placed under No. 1 Group of RAF Bomber Command, it lay a few miles south of the town of Grimsby and spent the whole war as a front-line heavy-bomber station.

Its first resident unit was No. 142 Squadron, which flew Vickers Wellingtons from late 1941 until December 1942. In early 1943 the station’s character shifted to four-engined operations with the arrival of No. 100 Squadron, equipped with the Avro Lancaster, which would be associated with Waltham for the rest of the war. No. 550 Squadron was also formed here on Lancasters in late 1943 before moving on to North Killingholme. The airfield mounted its first sorties in March 1943 with mine-laying operations, and over the course of the bombing campaign its squadrons paid a heavy price, losing some 48 Wellingtons and well over a hundred Lancasters.

Flying wound down in 1945, after which No. 35 Maintenance Unit used the hangars for storage before the station finally closed. The land returned largely to agriculture, with the A16 later cutting across part of the site, and surviving buildings and a memorial to No. 100 Squadron now mark its wartime past.