RAF Debach

RAF Debach was a wartime airfield in Suffolk, around three miles north-west of Woodbridge, built during 1943 and 1944 by an American aviation engineer battalion. Although it carried an RAF name, it was constructed for the United States Army Air Forces, who knew it as Station 152. The base opened in April 1944 as a heavy-bomber station in the Eighth Air Force’s 93rd Combat Bombardment Wing.

Its principal occupant was the 493rd Bombardment Group (Heavy), made up of the 860th, 861st, 862nd and 863rd Bombardment Squadrons. The group flew its opening mission on D-Day, 6 June 1944, initially equipped with the Consolidated B-24 Liberator before converting to the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress in September 1944. Over the following months its crews struck targets across Germany and occupied Europe, among them Magdeburg, Cologne, Merseburg, Frankfurt and Strasbourg, flying their last combat sortie against the marshalling yards at Nauen on 20 April 1945.

After the war the site served briefly as a prisoner-of-war and then displaced-persons camp before being abandoned and sold off in the early 1960s, much of it reverting to farmland. The control tower was later restored as a museum commemorating the 493rd Bomb Group, and part of the former airfield is now occupied by commercial premises.