World War II Database

Contributor: David Stubblebine

ww2dbaseBritain's Royal Air Force considered a flat plateau in the English countryside just north of the Bedfordshire village of Thurleigh as a favorable location for a bomber base. Work began in 1940 and the aerodrome was built with three intersecting runways, the longest running 6,000 feet. A few Royal Air Force ground units passed through the airfield but few aircraft were stationed there in the early days.

ww2dbaseOn 4 Jun 1942, RAF Thurleigh was listed for use by the United States Army's VIII Bomber Command and was the first base in England to be handed over completely to the United States Army Air Forces. Designated as Station AAF-111, the 306th Bombardment Group (Heavy) began landing their B-17 Fortress bombers at Thurleigh on 7 Sep 1942. The bomb group, known as the "Reich Wreckers," was comprised of four squadrons and flew their first combat mission on 9 Oct 1942 against the steel works at Lille, France. The group remained at Thurleigh throughout the war and flew a total of 341 bombing missions; missions that took them as far south as Montbartier in southern France for a raid on an oil facility and as far east as the port of Gdynia in Poland. They dropped nearly 23,000 tons of bombs and their total flying miles were enough for the group to fly around the globe eleven times. The 306th stayed longer at a single base than any other Eighth Air Force combat unit and longer in England than any other group.

ww2dbaseDuring the time the Americans were at Thurleigh, the base received many distinguished visitors. On 13 Nov 1942, King George VI of the United Kingdom toured the base, escorted by the commander of the USAAF First Bomber Wing, Brigadier General Newton Longfellow. Another early visitor was United States Secretary of War Henry Stimson. On 15 Jul 1943, Stimson presented the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Maynard Smith, a ball turret gunner on a B-17. The entire Bomb Group assembled in full dress uniform with the Secretary of War and other dignitaries in attendance – and Sergeant Smith nearly missed it. He had not been notified of the assembly and was on punitive kitchen duty at the time. Once he was located, he was hastily dresses and brought to the assembled formation to receive his medal. His medal was for single-handedly and simultaneously extinguishing a raging fire inside his damaged airplane, tending to wounded crewmates, and firing machine guns at attacking German fighters.

ww2dbasePerhaps the most distinguished visit to RAF Thurleigh has something of a back story. One of the B-17 bombers at Thurleigh flew with the name "Princess Elizabeth" painted on the nose, honoring Britain's elder Princess (and later Queen). The RAF had earlier named one of their bombers "George" and another "Elizabeth" after the reigning King and Queen, but both planes crashed. Separately, the Germans had tried to score some propaganda points using the names of crashed Allied airplanes. So, word filtered down from the Palace to remove royal names from combat aircraft; partly because it seemed to be bad luck in the case the two RAF bombers "George" and "Elizabeth" but also to deny the Germans possible propaganda opportunities. With that, the B-17 "Princess Elizabeth" at the 306th was renamed simply "The Princess." As the airplane's crew chief, Master Sergeant Edward Gregory, was repainting the name, the idea struck him to ask the actual Princess to re-christen the airplane with the new name. He sent a proposal through channels and the idea filtered upward until it landed in front of the King himself. The King approved the idea but wished the name would refer to the Princess less explicitly. Since the King had been the Duke of York when the Princess was born and, as a girl, Elizabeth had been known as the Rose of York, His Majesty himself proposed the name "Rose of York" for the airplane. On 6 Jul 1944, King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth, a few royal courtiers, and USAAF Eighth Air Force Commander General Jimmy Doolittle made an official visit to RAF Thurleigh. Master Sergeant Gregory presented the Princess with a bouquet of 24 white roses and she was introduced to all of the plane's flight crew and ground crew. The Princess then christened the airplane "Rose of York" by breaking a bottle of English cider against the nose. The bomber went on to complete a total of 63 combat missions before it was lost on a raid to Berlin on 3 Feb 1945.

ww2dbaseWhen the war ended, the 306th Bomb Group moved out of Thurleigh. The air base then became home to a branch of the Royal Aircraft Establishment and became known as RAE Bedford. The Royal Aircraft Establishment was a descendant of the Royal Aircraft Factory and was the research arm of the British aeronautics industry. A new 10,000-foot runway was built as part of the development of the Bristol Brabazon trans-Atlantic airliner that never went into production. Air operations at RAE Bedford closed in 1994 but certain research activities continued until 2007. A portion of the land was converted into a business park while the runways remained serviceable as reserves. Some of the taxiways have been converted into car racing tracks and currently the runways are being used to store over 10,000 automobiles. At the northwest edge of the property sits the 306th Bombardment Group Museum.

ww2dbaseThe memory of RAF Thurleigh as a bomber base, however, lives on in the book, movie, and television series called "Twelve O'Clock High." The co-authors of the book, and also the movie screenplay, were both officers on the staff of General Ira Eaker and the Eighth Air Force. Their book is a fictionalized history of an Eighth Air Force Bomb Group based largely on the 306th at Thurleigh. In the book and movie, the 306th became the 918th and Thurleigh became Archbury, but many of the characters and incidents remain true to men of the Eighth Air Force and the 306th Bomb Group.

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