RAF Framlingham [parham]

RAF Framlingham, more commonly remembered today as Parham, was a heavy bomber airfield in Suffolk, lying between the villages of Parham and Great Glemham some miles east of the market town that gave it its RAF name. Built to the standard Class A pattern between 1942 and 1943, it was handed to the United States Army Air Forces as Station 153 and served the Eighth Air Force throughout its operational life rather than RAF Bomber Command.

Its first occupants, the 95th Bombardment Group, stayed only a matter of weeks in mid-1943 before moving on to Horham. The 390th Bombardment Group then took up residence in July 1943 and remained until the war’s end, flying the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress with its four squadrons, the 568th, 569th, 570th and 571st. The group earned distinction early, including a Distinguished Unit Citation for the costly Regensburg raid of August 1943, and went on to take part in the Big Week attacks on German aircraft production in February 1944 and the bombing supporting the Normandy landings.

Over more than 300 missions the 390th dropped some 19,000 tons of bombs, losing 181 aircraft and 714 airmen killed, and flew its final operation in April 1945. The station closed soon afterwards and the land returned to farming. The wartime control tower was restored from 1976 and opened in 1981 as the 390th Bombardment Group Memorial Air Museum, which preserves the site’s history today.