RAF Metheringham

RAF Metheringham was a wartime-built bomber station that opened in October 1943 on the fen edge about twelve miles south-east of Lincoln, working within No. 5 Group alongside Coningsby and Woodhall Spa. Its single operational squadron was No. 106, which flew in from Syerston in November 1943 and operated Avro Lancasters from Metheringham until early 1946. The cost of those operations was severe: the squadron lost around 65 Lancasters and almost a thousand aircrew.

It was from Metheringham that one of the war’s most celebrated acts of bravery was flown. On the night of 26–27 April 1944, returning from Schweinfurt, the flight engineer Sergeant Norman Jackson climbed out onto the wing of his burning Lancaster to try to put out an engine fire. Swept off the wing and badly burned, he survived by parachute and was taken prisoner, and was later awarded the Victoria Cross.

After the war the airfield wound down through a maintenance unit and closed in 1946, the land returning to farming. The old ration store now houses the Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre, and a memorial garden to No. 106 Squadron remains on the site.