RAF East Wretham

RAF East Wretham lay roughly six miles north-east of Thetford in Norfolk, on the heaths that now form part of the army’s Stanford Training Area. Built in 1939 as a grass satellite to RAF Honington, it came into use in March 1940 under Bomber Command’s No. 3 Group, and from the outset its work was tied to the night bombing offensive.

The first long-term resident was No. 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron, formed largely of airmen who had escaped occupied Czechoslovakia, which operated from East Wretham between mid-1940 and early 1942. No. 115 Squadron followed from late 1942, flying Vickers Wellingtons and later converting to the four-engined Avro Lancaster. Czech operational training and heavy-conversion units also passed through the station, and the airfield was defended by several RAF Regiment flights.

In October 1943 the station was handed to the United States Army Air Forces as Station 133. The 359th Fighter Group of the Eighth Air Force flew from here, first with Republic P-47 Thunderbolts and then North American P-51 Mustangs, escorting heavy bombers deep into Germany and supporting the D-Day landings, Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge. The group earned a Distinguished Unit Citation for its actions on 11 September 1944.

After the war the site briefly housed a Polish resettlement camp before the RAF gave it up in the late 1940s. It was absorbed into the army’s training estate and the former airfield remains disused military land today.