RAF Matching
About
RAF Matching was built in the Essex countryside east of Harlow and opened in 1944 as a United States Army Air Forces base, Station 166. It was home to the Martin B-26 Marauders of the 391st Bombardment Group, which flew medium-bomber missions against targets in occupied Europe from February 1944 until moving to France that September; the RAF then used it for paratroop-exercise and target-towing flying. The Americans’ departure left the field to agriculture, though the control tower still stands and a memorial in the local church honours the bomb group.
Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including Matching — Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust and RAF Matching — Wikipedia. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.
Photographs
ⓘ licence & credit
Robin Webster / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Former_control_tower,_RAF_Matching_-_geograph.org.uk_-_3537156.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
Robin Webster / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Farm_track,_former_RAF_Matching_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7377370.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
Robin Webster / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Farm_track_and_effective_bridleway,_former_RAF_Matching_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7377374.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
Glyn Baker / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Experimental_Radar_at_Former_RAF_Matching_-_geograph.org.uk_-_6473613.jpgView source & full licence →ⓘ licence & credit
British Government. Annotations on photo from Freeman, Roger A., UK Airfields of the Ninth: Then and Now, 1994. / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matching-aug1943.jpgView source & full licence →No people are cross-referenced to this airfield yet. Links appear as squadron postings, crews and service records are added.