Parham Airfield

The Airfeild is now a museum - click here to visit the official website.

The airfield, which was known at the time as Framlingham, or Station 153, but is now known as Parham, had three runways, joined by a perimeter track. Before the building operations were complete the 95th Bomb Group took temporary residence for about a month before moving north to Horham. They were replaced by the 390th Group, bringing their B-17F Flying Fortresses from Orlando, Florida in mid-July 1943.

The crews took part in a variety of bombing raids, their targets including ball-bearing factories, oil refineries, V1 launch sites, and German ports. In order to penetrate further into enemy territory, including Berlin, Hungary, Italy and Poland, some missions ended at North African or Russian airfields. It was on one of those Russan stopovers that the group lost several aircraft on the ground in a Luftwaffe raid. The group also took part in the famous raids on the Norwegian heavy water plant in the Telemark area, thought to be part of a German attempt to build an atomic bomb.

Parham village itself was on the receiving end on December 26th when, in freezing conditions, one B-17 crashed shortly after take-off, destroying the chapel in the village and killing 9 of the crew.

The group carried out its last mission on 20th April 1945, making a total of 300 missions and losing 144 aircraft altogether.

Like most of the wartime East Anglian airfields, within a few years the main part of the runways had been dug up to leave just one-track farm roads. On the western edge part of the site continues in use as an airfield for light aircraft. This part was also used occasionally for model aircraft flying long before the Parham Model Flying Club was set up on the opposite side of the airfield. Several airfield buildings still exist, housing small businesses, while a hangar accomodates who knows what for the MoD. The Control Tower is now a museum - click here to visit the museum website.

Since November 21st 2006