RAF Lakenheath

RAF Lakenheath lies in the Breckland of west Suffolk, a few miles north-east of the village of Mildenhall and tied to that older station from its earliest days. Construction began in 1940 and the airfield came into use in 1941 as a Mildenhall satellite, with a 3,000-foot main runway and two 2,000-foot subsidiaries laid across the heath. In its first phase it was a dispersal field rather than an operational base in its own right, hosting detachments of Bomber Command units passing through while the parent station ran the war.

Lakenheath became a full operational bomber station in 1942. No. 149 Squadron arrived on 6 April 1942 with Short Stirlings and stayed until mid-1944; No. 199 Squadron joined them on Stirlings from 21 June 1943 and moved out to RAF North Creake on 1 May 1944. Both squadrons flew the early heavy-bomber offensive over occupied Europe at a point when the Stirling’s low ceiling made it the most exposed of the three heavies. Late in 1944 the airfield was withdrawn from operations for upgrading to “Very Heavy Bomber” standard, with concrete runways long enough for the post-war generation; it remained closed to flying until April 1947.

The runway extension determined what came next. In July 1948, against the backdrop of the Berlin Airlift, B-29s of the United States Strategic Air Command’s 2nd Bombardment Group deployed to Lakenheath, and the station passed from RAF to USAF use as a forward bomber base. SAC tenants rotated through the 1950s before the mission shifted from bombers to fighters: the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing, the “Liberty Wing”, flew its F-100 Super Sabres in from Chaumont-Semoutiers in France on 15 January 1960 after de Gaulle’s withdrawal from NATO’s integrated structure forced US units out of France. The wing has held the base ever since, converting to F-4 Phantom IIs at full strength by 1 July 1975, to F-111 Aardvarks from March 1977, and to F-15E Strike Eagles in 1992.

Today the 48th Fighter Wing operates the F-15E alongside the F-35A Lightning II, the first of which arrived on 15 December 2021 — the first US F-35 unit permanently based in Europe. Lakenheath has also been linked to the American nuclear stockpile across its post-war life, with two on-base weapons accidents recorded (1956 and 1961) and reporting in July 2025 of B61-12 tactical gravity bombs flown in from a New Mexico storage site, restoring a capability that had been quietly withdrawn after the Cold War. The runways the RAF concreted for the post-war heavies are still in daily use.