RAF Mepal • Mepal

Former site of RAF Mepal, Cambridgeshire

Home to No 75 New Zealand Squadron flying Short Stirlings and later Avro Lancasters. 

The area now has reverted to pre-war use as agricultural land, and over part of the site an industrial park. The site is also cut in to by the A142 bypass, but old maps show where the main areas once were. There are a few hints of its past though.

 Several tracks cut across the fields shadowing the old runways and service routes. On the outskirts of the site are also piles of rubble which look to have been small sheds and buildings in the recent past. The control tower no longer exists, but was only pulled down in 1988, which seems to shame. The airfield was in use until 1963 and it was during this time that a ghost of an airman was seen on several occasions. One witness was apparently an RAF policeman, who saw a pilot in full flying gear appear and disappear in front of him. As far as I know, the ghost has not been seen recently, perhaps being more associated with the control tower than the land in general. 

Cutting across the track elsewhere on site you can just about make out a concrete strip, which looks to be remnants of the main airstrip. These runways are haunted by the sounds of a heavy bomber coming into land, but when the listener turns around there are no planes in sight. 

The last photo here is of Park Road, in the village of Sutton. The village borders the lower edge of the base. On 8th Sept 1943 18 bombers took off from the base. A Stirling bomber slid off the runway, hit a fuel tank and crashed in to numbers 17 and 18. The houses were destroyed and Mr Randall who was watching the take off from his garden was sadly killed, along with the flight crew from the Stirling. His wife was injured but survived. This story was told to me by someone at the nearby RAF Witchford museum. 

///enthused.acrobats.trailers

Decoy Airfield • Cottenham

 

It was getting toward dusk by the time we left....

On a mid-February day my Dad decided to take me out and show me a pile of rubble in a field. This is a fairly typical offer I get from anyone asking if I'd like a day out. Obviously, I accepted. On this occasion, the pile of rubble was associated a decoy airfield that used to sit on the outskirts of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire.

If you follow Broad Lane out of the village it seemingly disappears off into the fen. This was our destination, apparently. At a point along the 'road' where two concrete blocks sit to the right, a footpath runs alongside a dyke between two fields. This is where our pile of rubble was. 

 The decoy airfield was built during the Second World War to divert the attention of German planes away from nearby airfields of RAF Oakington & RAF Waterbeach. It was a simple affair. Four inch posts were set into the ground to simulate a runway. Each of the posts had a hurricane lamp fixed to the top, and each night a man would come from Oakington airfield to light them. 

It seems to have been effective as a number of bombs were dropped around the site and there is even a story of a British plane trying to land there. 

Later the hurricane lamps were replaced with electric lamps, with a bunker built to house the generator & controls. Our pile of rubble is all that's left of the generator house. Occasionally, still, wires and cables are ploughed up by the farmer, and a bit of this has found its way into Dad's spare room.

The view toward Cottenham from the airfield.

///quite.crusted.overt

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