RAF Tempsford

RAF Tempsford, opened in 1941 near Sandy in Bedfordshire, was outwardly an unremarkable bomber field — and that was the point. It became the principal home of the Royal Air Force’s clandestine flying, where Nos. 138 and 161 Squadrons worked for the Special Operations Executive, delivering agents and supplies into German-occupied Europe and, by the light of the moon, bringing some of them out again.

The two squadrons used aircraft suited to that secret trade: Handley Page Halifaxes and Short Stirlings for parachute drops of agents, arms and wireless sets, and the small Westland Lysander — able to land and take off from a rough field in minutes — for the most dangerous task of all, the pick-up. The station drew remarkable people. Group Captain Percy Pickard and Wing Commander Hugh Verity, who wrote the classic account of the moonlight landings, both served here, and agents who flew out from Tempsford included Violette Szabo. Much of the work was prepared in a plain-looking barn known as Gibraltar Farm, where departing agents were given their equipment.

The special-duties flying ended with the liberation of Europe, and the station was run down after the war and finally closed in the early 1960s. The land returned to agriculture, and the airfield’s secret history is now kept by a local museum and memorial.