The Airfield Construction Programme During the

                           Second World War

This section of the website endeavors to give an insight into the operational history and construction of Ridgewell Airfield. The following few paragraphs give an introduction as to why Ridgewell and many other similar airfields were constructed in Eastern England at the outbreak of the second world war. Please click on the menu items (left) for more specific information.

After the fall of France in 1940, the British Government felt the only way to defeat Germany was through air power. RAF Bomber Command was charged to fulfill this task, while the British aircraft and construction industries were given the necessary directives, equipment and materials to design and supply the aircraft and build the bases.

The vast majority of the RAF's established Bomber bases were located in Lincolnshire. Many of these bases, expanded in the 1930's, had well designed built Building Structures and Hangars but still relied on grass runways, which would prove most unsuitable for the new four-engine heavy bombers about to enter service. A standard airfield design was produced, which could be quickly constructed and modified to meet local conditions. Most of these new bases would be located in East Anglia, allowing the new bomber fleet a greater range into Europe.

In order to construct each new Type A design or similar size wartime airfield about 600 acres had to be requisitioned, cleared and leveled, and access roads built. Some 130,000 tons of hardcore, cement and tarmacadam was needed to lay the 40,000 square yards of runways, taxiways, hardstandings, roads and pathways. This, plus about 50 miles of pipes and conduits, went into the self contained small town that would rise out of the British countryside.

In 1942 R.A.F airfields were made available to the American Airforces, units of which had begun to arrive in ever increasing numbers. Ridgewell (designated Station 167 by the USAAF) was one of some 36 additional airfields that were built especially for them by the Air Ministry Works Department .

Runways were laid in the now familiar shape of a letter A, the main one being 2000 yards in length and in the direction of the prevailing wind with a subsidiary runway each side about 1400 yards long and at an angle of about 60 degrees to the main one. By the time the airfield had been officially taken over from the builders  the first aircraft had already arrived. Little time could be spared for further training before the comparatively untried unit was called upon to perform its first operational sortie.

At its peak the Eighth U.S.A.A.F., the largest of all the American Airforces, had 63 airfields mainly in East Anglia. Bomber Command had over 135 operational and non-operational airfields stretching through eastern Britain from Inverness to Cambridge. After five years of intense development, the greatest civil engineering project to have been undertaken upto this time was witnessed by the Country.

By 1945 Bomber Command had been given some very powerful tools to wage the war in the air. This resulted in over 955,000 tons of bombs being dropped by the R.A.F. along with a further 621,000 tons unloaded by the U.S.A.A.F. But even this staggering total of high explosives, and in spite of the terrible sacrifices made by the young aircrew,was still not enough to bring Germany to its knees and sue for unconditional surrender.

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