Back to RAF Tempsford
publications
RAF Tempsford
My interest in RAF Tempsford, a small
airfield in rural Mid-Bedfordshire, has arisen only recently. I moved from
Potton into a bigger house with a garden in Everton in 1990. As a teacher of
Humanities at St Neots Community College, I was keen to find out more about my
local area. I’d researched the ‘Potton Iguanodon’ and uncovered a fascinating
story about a very unusual 19th century industry that involved
digging up coprolites, which some thought to be fossilised dinosaur droppings.
To find that information I had had to visit libraries, museums, Record Offices
all over southern England. I had to write, E-mail, telephone, fax, knock on
doors and talk to people. These were all valuable research skills. I typed up
what I found and, after many years, managed to publish articles and books on
the subject.
Looking for another topic to research I
wondered about writing up the history of Everton but, with a population of only
around 500, I didn’t think the book would sell well. Instead I decided to create
a website and put my research on that. In fact, I started my research the wrong
way round by spending years studying the geology, archaeology and early history
of the village. I thought when I first embarked on my mission that I’d have a
page on the First World War, a page on the Mid-War, a page on the Second World
War and then bring the history up to date with another on the late 20th
century. By the time I got round to these topics in the mid-1990s, a number of
potentially knowledgeable local figures had died. I was too late to hear their
experiences of life in the village and local area.
Talking to some of the people in Everton I
eventually discovered that there was much more than a page that could be
written on what happened there during the Second World War. I’d seen the war
graves in the local parish church and seen the photograph in the Village Hall
of the local man who did not come back but it was Les and Gwen Dibdin, a local
couple, who sparked what has become an ongoing research project. Les told me
that he was an aircraft fitter during the war on Tempsford Airfield. I’d seen
the disused airfield at the bottom of the Greensand Ridge on some of my walks
around the village and noticed it on the Ordnance Survey maps I’d bought. What
intrigued me was that Les was not prepared to give me any details about what
work he did there. Why? Because he had signed the Official
Secrets Act.
However, they were prepared to show me the work of
their niece, Susie Scott. It was a piece of GCSE History coursework on
Tempsford Airfield which, based on her interviews with some of the pilots,
aircrew and passengers, shed fascinating light on what had gone on. She said it
had been a secret airfield and the locals were not meant to know what went on.
That sparked my interest and I began what has been a sixteen-year investigation
into what exactly happened there during the war. The first edition of my book, RAF
Tempsford: Now the Story can be Told was published in 1997 with a print run
of only fifty. They were nearly all bought by women, wanting to know what their
husband, brother, father, uncle, cousin or grandfather
did during the war. They had not told them because of the Official Secrets Act.
Over the years I have
added more and more information as my research has uncovered more details. The
number of pages has increased more than threefold. The latest edition is
‘RAF Tempsford – Bedfordshire’s Secret Airfield', the story of how the Air
Ministry selected this isolated spot and designed it specifically to look as if
it was a disused airfield. For all intents and purposes the locals considered
it an ordinary airfield except for the fact that the flights were only a few
days every month - on either side of the moon period. It was used by the
Special Operations Executive (SOE) in part of Churchill’s plan “to set
Europe ablaze” and provide the resistance with ammunition, supplies and
training as part of the Allies’ long-term plan to liberate occupied Europe..
The book details many of the top secret SOE
missions that the two special Squadrons, 138 and 161, flew from Tempsford
airfield. They used Lysanders, Stirlings, Halifaxes, Hudsons and other planes
to drop supplies to the resistance in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark,
Norway, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland as well as to drop nearly 1,500
'Joes' or ‘Bods’, the RAF slang for secret agents. These agents included a
number of brave women who were flown out on top secret missions. Sometimes
these agents needed bringing back to England. So did stranded air crew,
resistance leaders and VIPs. Many were lifted out from behind enemy lines by
Tempsford crews.
RAF Tempsford, perhaps a
lot more than other World War Two airfields, was very cosmopolitan. Americans,
French, Belgians, Dutch, Czechoslovakians, Norwegians and Poles were all
stationed there. However, Great Britain’s links with the Commonwealth meant
that there were also pilots and crews from further afield. Many did not return.
They took part in vital operations such as the
destruction of the heavy water plant at Vermork in Norway, the assassination of
Heydrich in Prague and the attempts to delay German support reaching Normandy
after the D-Day landings. Analysis of the Squadrons’ records show that between
1942 and 1945 there were 5,634 sorties from Tempsford to France. How many missions there were to Norway,
Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, North Africa and elsewhere are unknown. 138 Squadron took
995 agents and dropped an estimated 29,000 containers and 10,000 packages.
Seventy of their planes failed to return. 161 Squadron took an estimated 400
agents and lost 49 aircraft.
Exactly how many women agents were taken out from
Tempsford is uncertain, but it is estimated that there were at least twenty. Of
the estimated 1,400 agents, six were killed either by being dropped too low or
by jumping without static lines attached to their parachutes. How many people
were lifted out of occupied Europe and safely returned to Tempsford is unknown.
Across occupied Western Europe there were about 5,500 dropping grounds, areas
jokingly called “The Field” by those in the know.
Before D-Day the Tempsford planes had dropped an
estimated total of 2,151 million propaganda leaflets over the continent. Few,
if any of the pilots and crew, recognised the role they played in the Allies’
psychological warfare of disinformation and propaganda! Other missions flown
from Tempsford included dropping pigeons. The aim of this was that people could
open the canister attached to their leg, fill in the questionnaire with details
about German gun emplacements, troop movements etc and then release the bird to
fly back to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, where there was a pigeon loft
above the Station Commander’s garage! The information was then added to that
already obtained by the decoders using the Enigma machine. Of the 16,554 birds
dropped by the Tempsford squadrons, only 1,842 returned, just an 11% success
rate. Perhaps it was still enough to help in vital intelligence gathering. The
Germans were reported as saying that they tasted nice with peas!
The book investigates what went on in
requisitioned local country houses like Hazells Hall, Woodbury Hall, Tetworth
Hall, Tempsford Hall and Gaynes Hall. It looks at what links the airfield had
with Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire and the American air base at RAF
Harrington, near Kettering, Northamptonshire. It includes extracts from books,
memoirs, poems, letters, phone calls and E-mails written by agents, pilots, and
crewmembers of the RAF (Royal Air Force) and other air forces, the WAAF (Women's
Auxiliary Air Force), the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry), catering staff and
local men and women. It details the many air crashes around the airfield and
includes reminiscences of the social life on the base, in the Officers’ Mess,
the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) and local hostelries.
The Government restriction on the release of
sensitive documents to The National Archive, formerly the Public Record Office
in Kew, has meant that secret SOE documents are only gradually becoming
available. The release of information has not only shed light on some of the
secret work undertaken by the 2,000 plus personnel that served at RAF Tempsford
but has also encouraged an increasing number of people to publish their
memoirs. The recently launched BBC’s ‘People’s War’ website has been an attempt
to allow anyone with wartime memories to have them transcribed and added to a
searchable online database. Some of them have referred to their time at
Tempsford.
In 2005 I was contacted by the Secretary of Blunham
Women’s Institute and asked to talk to their members about RAF Tempsford. I
suggested that I would try to focus on the role of the women involved on the
airfield and set about putting together various anecdotes and finding
illustrations for them. The talk proved so successful that I was asked to
repeat it at Sandy Library. Advertisements in the local press and an interview
on Three Counties Radio meant the evening was a sell-out. The interest
generated has prompted me to write another book.
I’d like to thank Philippa Smalls for editing my
initial draft and making valuable suggestions to tie up loose ends. Any
typographical errors are mine as I’ve added subsequent information in dribs and
drabs. I’d like to acknowledge the following people for their research,
publications and reminiscences on the SOE and World War Two: Mont Bettles, Lucy
Bittles, Stuart Black, Bob Body, Bill Bright, John Button, Gordon Dunning,
Frank Griffiths, Roly Groom, Maureen Gurney, Steve Harris, David Harrison,
Jelle Hoolveld, Eileen Hytch, Wendy King, Steve Kippax, Bob Large, Tom Lowe,
Mrs. Park, Juliette Pattinson, Jim Peake, Murray Peden, Edna Phillips, Elsie
Riding, Jack and Dorothy Ringlesbach, Geoff Rothwell, Nigel Seamarks, Martin
Sugarman, Dorothy Summerhayes, Roger Tobbell, Steve Tomlinson and James
Wagland.
The following websites and organisations have also
been invaluable source of background information and illustrations for which
due credit is noted: Harrington Aviation Museum, Channel 4 – The Real Charlotte
Grays, Wikipedia, Spartacus, 64-Baker-Street, BBC/ww2peopleswar,
scrapbookpages, sameshield, users.nlc,
smithsonianmag, RAF Museum, Hendon, East Anglian
Aviation Society, aeroplanemonthly, Jaapteeuwen, 2iemeguerre, moviemail-online,
Clutch.open, site.voila, nzedge, wereldomroep, specialforcesroh, rafbombercommand,
histru.bournemouth, FANY, WAAF and Steve Kippax’s
Special Operations Executive user group on Yahoo.com Full details are provided in the
bibliography.
Any additions or deletions can be included in the
next edition (fquirk202@aol.com).