RAF Sudbury

52.0576, 0.7628 — view on OpenStreetMap ↗

About

RAF Sudbury opened in Suffolk in 1944 as a United States Army Air Forces base, Station 174. It was home to the 486th Bombardment Group, which flew Consolidated B-24 Liberators and then Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses on the Eighth Air Force’s daylight campaign against marshalling yards, oil targets and factories until May 1945. The Americans left after the war and the airfield returned to agriculture, its hangars now used for grain storage.

Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including RAF Sudbury — Wikipedia and Sudbury — Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.

Photographs

Sudbury Airfield, England 8 July 1945
ⓘ licence & creditPublic domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sudbury-8jul45(annotated).jpgView source & full licence →
RAF Sudbury (August 2022)
ⓘ licence & creditHarvey Milligan / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RAF_Sudbury.jpgView source & full licence →
B-24s of the 486th Bomb Group USAAF, flying out of RAF Sudbury, England. Identifiable is Ford B-24M-5-FO Liberator Serial 44-50561 of the 833d Bomb Squadron. This aircraft survived the war and was sent to Kingman, Arizona on 3 January 1946 for scrapping.
ⓘ licence & creditassumed USAAF / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:486bg-b24.jpgView source & full licence →
B-17s of the 486th Bomb Group, flying out of RAF Sudbury. England. Identifiable is Douglas-Long Beach B-17G-15-DL Fortress Serial 42-37891 Boeing B-17G-75-BO Flying Fortress, serial 43-37891, Old Man's Folly of the 833d Bomb Squadron.
ⓘ licence & creditassumed USAAF / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:486bg-b17.jpgView source & full licence →
Aerial photograph of RAF Sudbury, England.
ⓘ licence & creditRoyal Ordinance Survey / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sudbury-8jul45.pngView source & full licence →

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