RAF Cheddington

RAF Cheddington lay about a mile south-west of the village of Cheddington in Buckinghamshire, close to the Hertfordshire border. The land had served briefly as a flying ground during the First World War before being abandoned after the Armistice. It returned to service in March 1942, opening as a satellite of nearby RAF Wing for No. 26 Operational Training Unit, whose crews trained on Vickers Wellington bombers under Bomber Command.

Like several airfields in the area, Cheddington passed into American hands during the war. It was first allocated to the US Eighth Air Force in September 1942, when the 44th Bomb Group briefly assembled its B-24 Liberators there before relocating to Norfolk. The station reverted to RAF training use, then in August 1943 was handed back to the USAAF as Station 113, serving as a combat crew replacement centre for Liberator crews.

In its most distinctive role the airfield became a base for specialist psychological-warfare and electronic-warfare flying, home to the 858th Bomb Squadron, which dropped propaganda leaflets over occupied Europe, and the 36th Bomb Squadron, which flew radio countermeasure sorties to jam and confuse German defences.

After the war the site reverted to the RAF, was renamed RAF Marsworth in 1946, and served in turn as a medical training establishment and an ordnance store. It later housed a Polish refugee camp, and flying ceased entirely by the early 1950s.