Qualla: RAF Mendlesham

RAF Mendlesham: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adrian Cable, CC BY-SA 2.0. The bronze plaque the airmen left behind told the whole story in a few square feet: names, missions, a request that the local community remember. Then, in April 2010, someone pried the memorial off its mounting next to the A140 and presumably melted it down for scrap. Sixty-one years of standing watch ended in a single night. RAF Mendlesham, 5.5 miles east of Stowmarket in Suffolk, was already largely vanished by then. The runways had been broken up for aggregate. The control tower was gone. Only the T2 hangar at the old technical site still stood, surrounded by an industrial estate built on what had once been the headquarters of the 93rd Combat Bombardment Wing.

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Image: Adrian Cable | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Mendlesham: Czech Spitfires First

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before the Americans arrived, three RAF squadrons of Czechoslovakian pilots flew out of Mendlesham in Supermarine Spitfire LFIXs. Numbers 310, 312, and 313 Squadrons, all part of No. 134 (Czech) Airfield RAF, used the new field through the late winter and early spring of 1944. Th...

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Image: Ashley Dace | CC BY-SA 2.0

RAF Mendlesham: Square-S and the Long Conversion

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit assumed USAAF, Public domain. In March 1944, the field was reassigned to the United States Army Air Forces Eighth Air Force and designated Station 156. The 34th Bombardment Group (Heavy) arrived from Blythe, California, painting a large Square-S on the tails of their bombers. The group started the war flying ...

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Image: assumed USAAF | Public domain

RAF Mendlesham: Marshalling Yards and Oil

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit British Government, Public domain. From October 1944 through February 1945, the 34th hammered the strategic targets that defined the late air war: marshalling yards at Ludwigshafen, Hamm, Osnabruck, and Darmstadt; oil refineries at Bielefeld, Merseburg, Hamburg, and Misburg; factories in Berlin and Hanover; airfie...

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Image: British Government | Public domain

RAF Mendlesham: Chowhound and Coming Home

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit British Government, Public domain. In the war's final weeks, the bombers that had flown to Berlin flew instead to feed the Netherlands. The Dutch population had been starving through what they called the Hunger Winter of 1944-45. Under Operation Chowhound, the 34th dropped food into flooded Dutch fields. After V-E...

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Image: British Government | Public domain

RAF Mendlesham: What Remains

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinevans123, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today most of Mendlesham is farmland. Sections of the perimeter track and runway 02/20 survive as single-track farm roads. Local microlight pilots and the Suffolk Coastal Floaters hang-gliding club still use a grass-covered portion of runway 08/25, taking off from the same surfac...

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Image: Martinevans123 | CC BY-SA 4.0