RAF Great Massingham

RAF Great Massingham was a wartime airfield in Norfolk, lying roughly eight miles south-west of Fakenham. It came into use in 1940 as a satellite of nearby RAF West Raynham and was not given full parent-station status until June 1944. For most of the war its surface was grass, with hard runways laid only in the airfield’s later period.

The station served Bomber Command throughout the conflict. In its early years it was a No. 2 Group light-bomber base, home at various times to Nos. 18, 90 and 107 Squadrons flying Bristol Blenheims, and later to No. 342 (Lorraine) Squadron, a Free French unit. From 1944 the airfield passed to the bomber-support role under No. 100 (Bomber Support) Group, with No. 169 Squadron operating de Havilland Mosquitoes on night intruder and radar-countermeasures sorties against the German defences. A number of training, gunnery and radar-development flights were also based here over the years.

Flying continued after the war on a reduced basis, and the site was finally sold in 1958 and returned largely to agriculture. Parts of the old layout survived, and limited light aviation persisted at the location in later decades.