RAF Chipping Ongar/willingale

RAF Chipping Ongar, also known as Willingale after the neighbouring village, was a wartime airfield in Essex built during 1943. Like many bases of its period it was constructed primarily for American use, and from June 1943 it became home to the 387th Bombardment Group of the United States Army Air Forces, equipped with the twin-engined Martin B-26 Marauder medium bomber.

The 387th flew its first combat mission in August 1943, attacking German coastal defences in occupied France, and the group’s four squadrons (the 556th, 557th, 558th and 559th) operated from the station as part of the air campaign against targets across northwest Europe. Control of the field passed from the Eighth to the Ninth Air Force later in 1943. In the closing phase of the war the airfield also supported transport and airborne operations, serving as a base for C-47 troop-carrier aircraft involved in the airborne assaults of 1944 and 1945.

After the Americans departed, the station saw only limited continued service before being run down in the post-war years. The land largely returned to farming, with some aviation activity persisting on a small scale. Surviving traces, including stretches of perimeter track and the ruins of the operations block, remained visible into recent decades as reminders of the wartime airfield.