RAF Graveley

RAF Graveley opened in March 1942 a few miles south of Huntingdon, in what was then Huntingdonshire (now part of Cambridgeshire). Built as a Bomber Command station, it was first used by No. 161 Squadron for clandestine special-duties flying with Westland Lysanders before settling into the role for which it is best remembered. From August 1942 it became a Pathfinder base, home to No. 35 Squadron and absorbed into No. 8 (Pathfinder Force) Group, the formation tasked with marking targets ahead of the main bomber stream.

No. 35 Squadron flew Handley Page Halifaxes from the airfield and re-equipped with Avro Lancasters in 1944, while de Havilland Mosquitoes of No. 692 Squadron operated from Graveley on fast nuisance and marking raids. The station earned a place in aviation history as one of the earliest airfields fitted with FIDO, the petrol-burning fog-dispersal system, which first allowed aircraft to land through thick fog late in 1943.

Bomber operations wound down after the war and the squadrons departed by the later 1940s. Graveley afterwards served as a relief landing ground for flying training units before finally closing in 1968. Much of the site has since reverted to farmland, with a wind farm later occupying part of the former airfield and only scattered wartime structures remaining.