RAF Deenethorpe

RAF Deenethorpe lay about two miles east of Corby in Northamptonshire and opened in October 1943 as a heavy bomber station. Although built to British specifications, it was handed almost immediately to the United States Army Air Forces, becoming Station 128 of the Eighth Air Force. From November 1943 it served as home to the 401st Bombardment Group (Heavy), whose four squadrons — the 612th, 613th, 614th and 615th — flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

Over the following eighteen months the group mounted around 255 combat missions against German industry, shipyards, oil targets, airfields and rail yards, identified in the air by its Triangle-S tail marking. Its aircrews supported the major campaigns of the western theatre, including the Normandy landings, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge and the Rhine crossing, and earned a Distinguished Unit Citation for attacks on German aircraft factories early in 1944. The station also saw tragedy on the ground when a B-17 came down near the village in December 1943, the resulting explosion damaging local houses.

After the war the site passed back to the RAF and was put to secondary uses before being sold in 1963 and largely returned to farmland. Part of the main runway survived as a private airstrip used for light and microlight flying, while the control tower long remained a recognisable landmark.