RAF Bungay [flixton]

RAF Bungay, also known as Flixton after the nearby Suffolk village, was a wartime bomber airfield that opened in October 1942 a few miles south-west of the town of Bungay. Although built and held by the Royal Air Force, the station spent the war years under American control as part of the United States Eighth Air Force, which knew it as Station 125. It began life as a satellite of the neighbouring base at Hardwick.

After short early stints by the 310th Bomb Group, flying B-25 Mitchells, and the 93rd Bomb Group with B-24 Liberators, the field’s long-term occupant arrived in November 1943. This was the 446th Bombardment Group (Heavy), nicknamed the “Bungay Buckaroos”, whose four squadrons flew the Liberator on the daylight strategic offensive against German industry, ports and U-boat targets. The group supported the Normandy landings in June 1944, flew supply and interdiction missions over the Low Countries and the Ardennes, and continued operations until the closing weeks of the war in 1945.

When the Americans departed the airfield reverted to the RAF, serving as a maintenance unit into the mid-1950s. The runways were later broken up and the land returned largely to agriculture, though traces of the perimeter track survive. The nearby Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum keeps the site’s story alive.