"Bomber County" Topic

An American friend once said to me, "In America, we think a hundred years is a long time – but in England you think a hundred miles is a long way…"

With this in mind I wondered how much awareness there was of quite how densely packed Lincolnshire was with air bases. I know we all know Lincolnshire is 'Bomber County', but until I moved to a little village near Lincoln I never realised how CLOSE the air bases were.

Taking the nearest (RAF Ingham, later Cammeringham) as a centre point, within 10 miles there was RAF Scampton (famous for 617 Sqn and now home to the Red Arrows, which I see practising most days), RAF Dunholme Lodge (my kids' school occupies the site now), RAF Hemswell, RAF Faldingworth, RAF Sturgate, RAF Blyton and RAF Wickenby.

That's 8 bases within 10 miles.

I cannot begin to imagine what living here in 1943 would have been like; at night the sound of Merlin engines must have been almost continuous.

Full map here: link

Nick

It is rather surprising to me to see that kind of density. No wonder they had quite a few collisions. I'm actually surprised there weren't more.

From the two I did a quick search on, it appears that the runways were about 2,000 yds. in length, so that helps a bit. Modern ones are twice that.

Still though, with approach patterns and landing circuits, that doesn't leave a lot of room for maneuvering hundreds of bombers in the air, in that region at one time, as they all came lumbering back with tired crews, after a night of raids over the European continent.

Thanks for sharing.

It also helps explain why motor racing was so big in England after the war. A lot of those abandoned airfields became racetracks.

- Ix

Many of the eastern counties were the same. Norfolk was full of airfields as was eastern Yorkshire. Even in recent times the area around York had 3 military airfields operational – Linton-on-Oust, Church Fenton and Dishforth – not to mention numerous civil fields which had been military bases during the war. England wasn't called the world's largest aircraft carrier for nothing.

Digging up an obscure fact from one or other of my military history books, engineers stated in February 1944 that there was not a single place left in the UK to build another military airfield. Perhaps they should have let the German public know that fact; it would have had a rather negative impact on morale!