RAF Grafton Underwood

RAF Grafton Underwood lay about four miles north-east of Kettering in Northamptonshire and opened in 1941. Although built under the Royal Air Force, it became best known as a United States Army Air Forces bomber base, handed to the Eighth Air Force during the American build-up in Britain. RAF use also included No. 1653 Heavy Conversion Unit flying Consolidated Liberators, and after the war the airfield passed to No. 236 Maintenance Unit for vehicle storage and repair.

The station occupies a singular place in American air history. On 17 August 1942 the 97th Bombardment Group set out from here on the Eighth Air Force’s first heavy-bomber raid in Europe, striking the railway yards at Rouen with its B-17 Flying Fortresses. Among the crews that day was Paul Tibbets, who would later captain the Enola Gay. The field went on to host several B-17 groups before the 384th Bombardment Group arrived in May 1943 and remained until June 1945, earning two Distinguished Unit Citations.

Fittingly, the 384th also closed the campaign: its aircraft dropped the Eighth Air Force’s final bombs of the war, on the Skoda works at Pilsen in late April 1945. The RAF finally relinquished the site in the 1950s. Much of the airfield has since returned to farmland, with a memorial and a stained-glass window in the parish church commemorating those who served there.