LOST AIRFIELDS | EPISODE 6 • RAF NORTH WITHAM USAAF STATION 479 SECRET PRE-INVASION D-DAY MISSION

Ladies, gents and teddy bears, Ted and I are at Twyford Wood, Lincolnshire and travel back in time to RAF North Witham. It was once home to the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) and where North Witham was designated to the USAAF as Station 479. It was home to the IX Troop Carrier Command (TCC) and took the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions troops to the Normandy Battlefield. This was home to the Douglas C-47 Skytrain (Dakota in the RAF) powered by 2 × Pratt & Whitney R-1830-90C Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines rated at 1,200 hp.

Station 479 was built in 1943 with Class-A (A set of three runway strips built in a triangular configuration) concrete runways. Just a couple of hours before midnight, on June 5th 1944, the troops of the 82d and 101 Airborne Divisions waited for their mission to Normandy. Ready to launch a top secret, monumental and extremely dangerous pre-invasion strike before the D-Day battle begins.

With months of training, their secret mission was to position the Rebecca/Eureka radar and signalling beacons. These had to be positioned behind enemy lines and on the battlefield. The Rebecca/Eureka radio system was exactly like the Transponder and SSR communication, like the aircraft sending out signals to the Secondary Surveiland Radar and replying back, kind of like the “I am here” signals. This system was short range radar radio navigation system to assist the dropping of airborne forces and supplies. The Rebbecca system was the airborne transceiver and antenna system, calculating the range to the Eureka based on the timing of the return signals. The Eureka was ground based and was the transponder and if I may, is a Greek word pronounced “EVRIGA” which means to “I have found it”. Rebecca comes from the phrase “Recognition of Beacons”.

The Pratt and Whitney R1830 Twin Wasp engines of the C-47s started around 2100L, one after the other as their 14 Cylinder piston engines started to purr. Louder and louder the noise got as each C-47 was fired up. Lieutenant Colonel Joel Crouch and his brave crew took off from Station 479 using what was then, Runway 30. His was the first to depart of the twenty aircraft from North Witham that very night, heading south for Normandy. This was no ordinary mission as onboard the IX Troop Carrier Command’s Pathfinder School carried 200 specially trained elite Pathfinder Paratroopers of the 82d and 101st Airborne Divisions who would have skimmed the waters of the channel to fly underneath the detection of the enemy radar.


I have often mentioned the importance of weather for specific missions which can play a major part in combat, but I have also expressed the importance of the moon. On the night of the 5th June, the moon was nearly full. Imagine the glistening of the velvet sea, the slight reflections of metal from the weapons, imagine the view of the jumpmasters looking down at the amphibious fleet below.

It was 2300, the Normandy invasion would have exploded into a full combat battlefield, explosions, hundreds of C-47s dropping thousands of allied troops. Of the 20 C-47s that departed North Witham, 19 returned. However, all troops onboard the one that never returned were rescued as the aircraft crashed into the sea. We must never forget these brave men, who really had a slim chance of survival. An unarmed troop carrier, going into the battlefield is one risk, surviving until your feet are on the ground is another but then as your feet touch that battlefield, it is time.

On 1 June 1945 the station was handed over to No. 40 Group, RAF Maintenance Command.

0:53 Photo of Private Ware applying last second war paint to Private Plaudo in England June 1944.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_A...


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