No. 49 Squadron

Group
5 Group
Home station
RAF Fiskerton

About

No. 49 Squadron moved to RAF Scampton in 1938 and became the first unit to equip with the Handley Page Hampden, serving in No. 5 Group from the outbreak of war. On 12 August 1940 its Hampdens carried out a daring low-level attack on the Dortmund-Ems Canal, a vital German waterway; Flight Lieutenant Roderick Learoyd pressed his run home through fierce fire and was awarded the Victoria Cross — the first won by a member of Bomber Command.

The squadron briefly took the Avro Manchester in 1942 before settling on the Avro Lancaster, and early in 1943 moved to RAF Fiskerton. It flew in most of the major operations of the bomber war, among them the attack on the German rocket-research site at Peenemünde in August 1943, where it lost four of the twelve Lancasters it sent. Its badge shows a racing greyhound above the motto Cave Canem — “beware of the dog”.

Sources: This page was compiled from publicly available historical sources, including No. 49 Squadron Association — Squadron History and Wikipedia: No. 49 Squadron RAF. The text is original and has been written from factual source material; no source text has been copied unless specifically quoted and attributed.

Photographs

Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1939-1941. Armourers fit fuzes to 250-lb GP bombs on their trolleys, prior to loading into Handley Page Hampden Mark I, P1333 'EA-F', of No. 49 Squadron RAF at Scampton, Lincolnshire. P1333 crash-landed near Breda, Netherlands, on returning from a raid on Merseburg, Germany on 17 August 1940.
ⓘ licence & creditRoyal Air Force official photographer, Daventry B J (Mr) / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command,_1939-1941._CH254.jpgView source & full licence →
Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. Leading Aircraftwoman Lilian Yule tractors Avro Lancaster B Mark III, DV238 'EA-O', of No. 49 Squadron RAF to its dispersal slot at Fiskerton, Lincolnshire. DV238 later went to No. 44 Squadron RAF with whom it was lost during a raid on Berlin on 16/17 December 1944
ⓘ licence & creditRoyal Air Force official photographer / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command,_1942-1945._CH13716.jpgView source & full licence →
Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1939-1941. 250-lb GP bombs on trolleys are prepared by armourers, prior to loading into Handley Page Hampden Mark I, P1333 'EA-F', of No. 49 Squadron RAF at Scampton, Lincolnshire. P1333 crash-landed near Breda, Netherlands, on returning from a raid on Merseburg, Germany on 17 August 1940. The Hampden parked in the distance, P1347 'EA-D', crashed in Brittany with the loss of all her crew after being hit by anti-aircraft fire over Stettin, Germany, on 4/5 September 1940.
ⓘ licence & creditDaventry B J (Mr), Royal Air Force official photographer / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command,_1939-1941._CH262.jpgView source & full licence →
Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. Avro Lancasters await their crews in their dispersals at sunset, before taking off from Scampton, Lincolnshire on a bombing raid. The nearest aircraft is a Mark I, R5751 'EA-E', of No. 49 Squadron RAF, normally based at Fiskerton, also in Lincolnshire.
ⓘ licence & creditClark N S (P/O), Royal Air Force official photographer / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command,_1942-1945._CH9134.jpgView source & full licence →
Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. A WAAF intelligence officer, Section Officer P Duncalfe, questions the pilot, Warrant Officer H Blunt (to her left), and crew of Avro Lancaster B Mark III, JB362 'EA-D', ("D for Donald") of No. 49 Squadron RAF, on their return to Fiskerton, Lincolnshire, from a bombing raid on Berlin, Germany. On their next sortie to Berlin five days later, Blunt and his crew were shot down in "D for Donald" and killed.
ⓘ licence & creditMiller (F/O), Royal Air Force official photographer / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Air_Force_Bomber_Command,_1942-1945._CH18658.jpgView source & full licence →
Aircraft of the Royal Air Force 1939-1945- Avro 683 Lancaster. Lancaster B Mark I, W4113 ‘GP-J’, of No. 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit based at Winthorpe, Nottinghamshire, in flight. W4113 was a veteran aircraft having flown on a number of raids with Nos. 49 and 156 Squadrons RAF in 1942 and 1943
ⓘ licence & creditStanley Devon / Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aircraft_of_the_Royal_Air_Force_1939-1945-_Avro_683_Lancaster._CH11936.jpgView source & full licence →
ⓘ licence & creditChase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No._49_Squadron_RAF_badge.jpgView source & full licence →

Aircraft (1)

SerialCodeTypeFate
AT129 EA-O Handley Page Hampden Lost on operations

No service records linked to this squadron yet. Aircraft, crews and sorties will appear here soon.

Further reading & sources

External sites — facts only are reused here; their text and images remain their authors'.