RAF Beccles

RAF Beccles, also known as Ellough after the hamlet beside which it lay about two miles south-east of the Suffolk market town, was among the last airfields built in the county during the Second World War and ranked as the most easterly in wartime England. Construction was completed around 1942-44, originally with the United States Army Air Forces in mind as Station 132, though the Americans never took it up. It passed instead to the Royal Air Force, briefly under Bomber Command before transferring in August 1944 to No. 16 Group, Coastal Command.

Its best-remembered role came in the autumn of 1944, when No. 618 Squadron used the station to train with the “Highball” weapon, a smaller spinning bomb developed from the bouncing bombs of the Dambusters raid, dropped from de Havilland Mosquitoes against the airfield runway marked out to imitate an aircraft-carrier deck. After two months the unit departed to prepare for service against Japan in the Far East.

From late 1944 into 1945 Beccles served chiefly as an air-sea rescue base, No. 280 Squadron flying Vickers Warwicks to recover ditched aircrew, joined at times by Nos. 278 and 279 Squadrons and by Fleet Air Arm units. After the war the site saw varied use, becoming a North Sea helicopter base for many years and later supporting flight training, parachuting and an industrial estate, while continuing to operate as a private aerodrome.