1940 to 1945
(A satellite of R.A.F. OAKINGTON)
by Peter Rowell, Hardwick
I was at school before the war at The Bourn Childerley Gate Council
School, this school was built in the 1920's and stood beside the main road
(A45, now A428) next to the road to Mr Brown's Farm (now the Rotortech/
Pre Star area). The first we knew of the building of the airfield was when
men were going round cutting down all the trees. Gradually, during the
summer the aerodrome (as they were then called) took shape. The main
runway ran from near the school to Grange Farm, off the Broadway, Bourn.
The first aeroplanes (then the term for aircraft) were Vickers Wellingtons
(101st Squadron), which must have arrived as soon as the runways were
usable. This was probably late summer after "Dunkirk", their
main targets at this time were the U-boat pens at Brest (the French Naval
Base). After take-off they would head in a south-westerly direction.
Our school did not last long. One morning we went to school and found a
lot of bricks and broken chimney pots laying in the playground. A
Wellington pilot had misjudged his approach and caught the chimney with
his undercarriage. I believe he managed to land OK. The school was closed
and we then went to the Village Halls at Caldecote & Hardwick, neither
of which now exist.
My father had started work on aerodrome construction in 1936, first at
Debden, then Bassingbourn, Wyton, Witchford, Oakington and finally Bourn.
He stayed at Bourn for the rest of the war, first on construction then in
1943 he was declared unfit and taken onto the Air Ministry Works Dept. on
an inside job.
We got to know many of the R.A.F. personnel (officers and other ranks).
Through him I got to know the H.Q. staff, Sqdn/Ldr Colley (Camp
Commandant), Wing/Cmdr Briggs, Flt/Lt Lewis, W.O's Schofield and Alcock.
The H.Q. was in the old Little Common Farmhouse (the first house on the
left in the Broadway). Sqdn/Ldr Colley did not like being saluted when he
went round the station. On one occasion I remember being in the Gas
Defence Centre when he came in with Flt/Lt Lewis, a new airman on the
station jumped to attention and saluted, was duly acknowledged by the
officers and at the end of their inspection, Sqdn/Ldr Colley went to Cpl
Hills and said "Have a word with him". Sqdn/Ldr Colley often
drove to Cambridge in the evening and made a point of leaving Cambridge 20
minutes after the RAF lorry which picked up airmen to take them back to
Bourn, so that he could pick up any who had missed the lorry. He was a
very respected officer.
It would probably be late 1941 when the Wellington squadron was replaced
by the Short Stirling 15th Squadron. There now began a period of heavy
losses, both through enemy action and accidental crashes around the
airfield. The Stirling was the only heavy bomber we had at the time but
had several faults, one seemed to be that if one engine failed another
would fail after about 10 minutes. I remember watching a Stirling circling
Bourn with an engine stopped, he fired a double red "very" flare
but before he could get down another engine failed and he slipped sideways
into the ground on the north side of the A45 east of Caldecote turn, the
fuselage laid flat on its side with the starboard wing straight up.
It was about this time that Sqdn/Ldr Colley was posted to R.A.F. Downham
Market (Bexwell), Norfolk, and I lost my close contact with the airfield.
Security was tightened and we began to get German attacks on Bourn and
Oakington. These were mostly single bombers who seemed to know their way
to the airfields. One particular one became so persistent at Oakington and
the RAF Regiment AA gunners could not stop him. A crack Royal Artillery
team was brought in to man the Bofors gun. The bomber came that night, the
RA team fired and hit the plane, crippling it and it crashed soon after.
Another time, a Junkers JU88 found Bourn, laid some parachute flares and
was on his trial run to bomb the hangers at the north east of the
airfield, when a Bristol Beaufighter caught him either by radar or lit by
his own flares and raked him with 20mm cannon shells. He was burning from
end to end when he crashed on Orwell Hill.
Short Sebro Ltd. was the organisation which built Stirlings at Madingley
Road, Cambridge, and I believe was partly government owned. There were six
or seven massive hangers at the works which was on the site to the east of
the M11, where the Schlumberger Building (like a mini Millenium Dome) now
stands. The wings were taken to Bourn on RAF "Queen Mary"
trailers, the fuselages on special trailers drawn by a David Brown tractor
(I wonder how they got up Madingley Hill). The loaded trailer must have
weighed 10-12 tons, or did they use two tractors on the hill. Final
assembly and testing was done at Bourn. It is on record that a half scale
model of a Stirling was built in the prototype stage, this often flew into
Bourn piloted by Shorts Test Pilot. On other occasions he flew his own De
Havilland Dominie. It may seem incredible but I have seen him almost stall
a Stirling onto the end of the main runway and turn off to the hangers at
the first runway crossing which went to the rear of the hangers, probably
around 500 yds. 
This photo was taken on Bourn airfield. One of the crew is not wearing a
parachute, he was the rear gunner (Jack
Greenwood). He was not allowed to fly because he had a poisoned
finger. The Stirling and its crew were lost, and Jack blamed himself. The
man standing in front of the wheel is "Shorty" Sealey, mid-upper
gunner who was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Pilot Officer
Monteith (also of the RCAF) was the "skipper".
When the Stirling squadron left Bourn we were to see signs of the future,
the first thing we knew of this was that suddenly there were a large
number of aircraft in the sky, towing gliders. The gliders were dropped
then the aircraft went round and landed. The gliders were loaded with the
squadron equipment and hooked up to the aircraft, which then took off. I
think that most of us realised then that this was how the Army were going
back into Europe.
It was noticeable that when the Avro Lancasters of 97th squadron
replaced the Stirlings at Bourn, the losses were drastically reduced. This
was in April 1943, many factors may be involved. Definitely a better
aircraft, better intelligence regarding German defences and also the
Luftwaffe were having increasing difficulties with supplies due to the
heavy air attacks on Europe. The Lancasters were much more reliable and
could be flown for great distances on three engines, this makes sense as
it was originally designed as the Manchester with two engines. More
damaged planes got back home and more importantly brought their crews
home.
The Lancaster squadron at Bourn had a very bad night when they were
almost wiped out. An important target was identified by intelligence
(probably Bletchley Park), the weather was forecast for a very bad fog in
the early morning. It was thought that Bourn would have a gap in the fog
at that time, so the squadron was ordered out to bomb the target.
According to records 12 (my father said there were 19 another account says
21) Lancasters took off, found the target and successfully bombed it. They
had no losses and returned to Bourn only to find that the airfield was
blanketed in fog. Every effort was made to light up the runway, burning
all manner of rubbish as well as the usual flarepath, to no avail. One
aircraft managed to find the runway and land, another was ordered to an
airfield in Lincolnshire and was believed lost in the Wash. The remaining
10 (17?) ran out of fuel and crashed on the circuit path around Bourn.
Each plane carried a crew of 8, I thought it had been "hushed up"
as I had found no record of this event until I went to H.Q. of the Rural
Flying Corps at Bourn, where I found the above information . Traffic
control used short wave radio and we could listen in to the aircraft so we
knew what was happening. My bungalow is on the circuit path and we did not
sleep with those aircraft circling and one by one, crashing.
It must have been in 1944 that the Lancasters were replaced with De
Havilland Mosquitoes, these were the pathfinders and photo-reconnaissance.
The Mosquito was a private venture by the De Havilland company, there was
no demand for that type of aircraft but they designed it from the pre-war
racing Comet. It is very similar in appearance but with better alround
vision, Rolls Royce Merlin engines gave it the power needed for its
purpose. It was used as fighter, fighter-bomber, ground attack and photo-
reconnaissance. In the latter role it operated without guns and relied on
speed (around 500mph). A plane from Bourn was one of the first to
encounter the German jet prototype, which was much faster, luckily it was
not armed.
One night a Mosquito from Oakington crashed on take off. The take-off
direction was south west and shortly after becoming airborne a fuel tank
blew up and it crashed in the same field that the Stirling mentioned
before had crashed in. It was carrying two 500lb bombs one of which
exploded on impact. Being made of wood, all that was left after 20 minutes
was glowing embers, two engines and one bomb.
The Mosquitoes from Bourn, took part in the "Round the clock raids"
on Berlin. These were designed to keep a constant "alert" in the
city. It was achieved by timing a pair of Mosquitoes over Berlin every ten
minutes. the Luftwaffe had severe problems at this time and was unable to
do anything about it. Mustangs and Yakolevs (Yaks) had chased them from
the sky.
1945 saw Victory in Europe, soon afterwards Bourn closed, the hangers
were taken over by Marshall of Cambridge to repair any usable service
vehicles. These were eventually sold at mass auctions at Gt. Gaddesden,
Herts.
In the bad winter of 1947, Marshalls kept the A45 open from Cambridge to
Bourn with two RAF "AEC Matador" lorries, one was a tanker and
the other a lorry with a winch underneath. They were running continually,
battering a way through the snow. The lorry with the winch was stationed
at one time at the top of Madingley Hill when it was all black ice,
winching buses and lorries up the hill. I often got a lift in the lorry to
Cambridge in the morning.
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For an excellent, detailed history of RAF Bourn, see http://www.bourn.org.uk/