RAF Halesworth

RAF Halesworth — sometimes called Holton after the neighbouring village — was built in 1942–43 on the Suffolk farmland north-east of the town, and opened in May 1943 as a United States Army Air Forces station. Its first occupants were the P-47 Thunderbolts of the 56th Fighter Group, the celebrated “Wolfpack” whose pilots Francis Gabreski and Robert S. Johnson became the leading American aces in Europe flying escort from here over France, the Low Countries and Germany. When the fighters moved on in April 1944 the airfield passed to the 489th Bombardment Group and its B-24 Liberators; it was on a mission flown from Halesworth on 5 June 1944 that Lieutenant Colonel Leon R. Vance earned the Medal of Honor. In the last months of the war the station became home to the 5th Emergency Rescue Squadron, flying Thunderbolts, Catalinas and air-sea rescue Fortresses out over the North Sea.

After the Americans left, the Royal Navy briefly used the field as HMS Sparrowhawk for conversion training before flying ended in February 1946. The runways were given over to food storage and then to agriculture, and much of the site is now occupied by a turkey-rearing business, a wind farm and a solar farm. A small museum on the airfield keeps its memory alive.