Qualla: RAF Eye

RAF Eye: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinevans123, CC BY-SA 4.0. The B-17 Flying Fortress with serial number 43-38400 was called Alice Blue Gown. Painted as the 851st Bomb Squadron sent it into action from RAF Eye, she completed sixty-seven combat missions over Germany - one of the highest tallies of any Fortress that flew from this Suffolk airfield. The 490th Bombardment Group arrived at Eye in May 1944 from Mountain Home Army Air Field in Idaho. Their B-24 Liberators flew the first missions in June, bombing French coastal defences as part of the D-Day support effort. Within five months the group had switched to B-17s and was attacking strategic targets across the Reich. After the war, Eye became something more unexpected. In 1992 it became the site of the world's first poultry-litter-fuelled power plant. The runways that once launched B-17s now surround a generating station fed on chicken manure.

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Image: Martinevans123 | CC BY-SA 4.0

RAF Eye: Built In a Hurry, Built To Standard

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Eye was a standard Class A airfield - the American specification for heavy bomber operations in England, with three intersecting runways laid out in a triangle and fifty hardstandings around the perimeter. Construction began in September 1942 with the U.S. Army's 829th Engineer B...

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Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

RAF Eye: The 490th and Its Missions

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The 490th Bombardment Group flew its first combat mission in June 1944, with B-24 Liberators marked with a Square-T tail code. Four squadrons formed the group: the 848th, 849th, 850th and 851st Bombardment Squadrons. The early missions targeted airfields and coastal defences in F...

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Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

RAF Eye: After V-E Day

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the 490th's aircraft did not immediately fly home. Their first post-combat task was a humanitarian one: dropping food into the flood-stricken areas of the Netherlands during Operation Chowhound, where civilians had been close to starvatio...

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Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

RAF Eye: Chicken Litter and Concrete

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0. After the war, Eye transferred to RAF Bomber Command on 1 November 1945 as an active station, but the airfield gradually wound down through the 1950s. The Air Ministry finally sold the land in 1962-63. The hangars and technical site were converted into an industrial estate, with ...

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Image: Ashley Dace | CC BY-SA 2.0