LOST AIRFIELDS | EPISODE 8 • RAF UPWOOD HOME OF THE PATHFINDER 156 SQUADRON "WE LIGHT THE WAY" GT-Q

RAF Upwood, in Cambridgeshire, dates its history back to the days of the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) in 1917, before the RAF. Initially the airfield was named RFC Bury, named after the village it sits on with Upwood. With a handful of various squadrons using the airfield as training station with BE.2, Avro 504 and other types of Biplanes. Upwood closed in 1919. It wasn’t until the air defence was in need of expansion that in 1934 many new airfields were being built. Upwood was chosen to become a medium bomber station and constructions began on C-type hangers and other buildings.

The Luftwaffe’s interest in the Upwood area were made even more clear when on the 1st of February 1941, a German spy, Josef Jakobs was captured by farmers after bailed out of his aircraft and parachuted onto the nearby fields, breaking his leg in the process. The authorities searched Jakobs and found a map of RAF Upwood and surrounding area, a code device and around £500 of cash. He was interogated, tried by court-martial at the Duke of York’s HQ where he was found guilty of treachery. He was executed at the Tower of London on the 15th August 1941 and became the last person to be executed at the Tower of London.

139 (Jamaica) Squadron, the first Squadron to carry out the first ever RAF sortie in WW2 with a single Blenheim on the 3rd September 1939, arrived with their DeHavilland Mosquito B.XVI in January 1944. The Mosquito was a British twin-engined multirole aircraft made out of wood and powered by two Roll-Royce Merlin V-12 engines rated at 1,710 hp with a max speed of 415mph. With a service ceiling of around 37,000ft, it was also capable of bringing back parts of Forrests, telegram poles and cables from its tree skimming height low level missions. It was the production of the Mosquito that led to furniture rationing due to its wooden construction. 139 (Jamaica) Squadron were a Pathfinder squadron. The Pathfinders would lead in front of the main bomber force, locate and marked targets by dropping flares onto the target to be bombed, so that the bombers could see their targets more accurately. 139 were already a very experienced Pathfinder squadron when they arrived at Upwood and their first mission was on the 2nd of February, using just a single Mosquito to mark targets over Berlin. They took part in many missions but at a cost. Between 1944-1945 at RAF Upwood, the squadron carried out several raids over Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne and other cities. They lost 32 aircraft with 19 men killed with 4 POW in that period of the war while based at Upwood.

“We light the way”, the motto of 156 Squadron, and one of the original Pathfinder squadrons made Upwood their home on the 5th of March 1944, arriving with their Avro Lancasters. Ten days after their arrival, 156 Squadron flew their first mission from Upwood, attacking Stuttgart. On a cold night of 30th March 1944, 156 Squadron with their GT tail code Lancasters were about to join a bomber force of nearly 800 bombers to raid Nuremberg. It was a raid labelled as the most catastrophic for bomber command, deemed as a massacre, a loss of 82 aircraft*, 543 airmen killed with over 150 made POW. 156 Squadron were in those figures of losses with 4 of their Lancasters failing to return. We have spoken about the weather on our shows and how much of an impact it has on a bombing mission. It was snowing that day, freezing conditions created contrails that left trail marks of the RAF’s bombers. And with each aircraft battered and then turning into flames, could then potentially light up the nearby aircraft in formation. To make matters worse on the Nuremberg raid, the cloud base was low, making the targets unclear for the Pathfinders and for the bomber force who relied on the Pathfinders to light the targets. The German night fighters also had special flares to assist in lighting up the bombers too with yellow and green flares.

The USAF operated from RAF Upwood in 1981 and became a Satellite station to RAF Alconbury and was hosted by the 10th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing and was home to the 423d Medical Squadron with a hospital built in the 80s.

RAF Upwood has been disused since 2013

#archaeology #worldwar2 #lostairfields

*aircraft losses of the outbound bombing run to target. A further 13 were lost after the bombing.

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