RAF Martlesham Heath and its key role in the Battle of Britain

A Hawker Hurricane (Image: Archant)

It’s 5.15am on July 10, 1940, and Nazi aircraft drop eighteen 50kg bombs on the edge of an aerodrome near Ipswich. There are no casualties, thankfully, but the Battle of Britain has started. And RAF Martlesham Heath, on the doorstep of mainland Europe, finds itself in this fight for freedom.

For nearly five months, in the first major wartime campaign fought by air forces, the RAF and Germany’s Luftwaffe compete above southern England for our nation’s very survival.

Hitler is determined to seize superiority of the skies, but fails – forcing him to delay and then scrap a sea and air invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion. A pivotal moment.

Although historians say it’s hard to state precisely how many planes were destroyed, it’s reckoned the RAF lost about 1,023 aircraft and Germany 1,887.

RAF Martlesham Heath. The control tower was built later in the Second World War and was not there during the Battle of Britain

RAF Martlesham Heath, not far from the North Sea, was one of the airfields vital in repelling the Nazis. The dropping of those bombs on July 10 signalled the start of an intense few months.

The next day, one of the RAF’s leading pilots had a lucky escape when his Hawker Hurricane fighter-plane was hit and came down in the sea. Squadron Leader Peter Townsend would later become equerry to King George VI and then the Queen. He had an ill-fated romance with Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister. Hopes of marriage evaporated because he was a divorcee.

Townsend, of 85 Squadron, was pursuing a Dornier off Southwold when his engine and coolant tank were damaged. He was rescued by a naval vessel and taken to Harwich. Had the boat not arrived, he could easily have died from hypothermia.

His combat report explained that at 6am he’d been ordered to intercept an unidentified aircraft.

Douglas Bader at Martlesham Heath in 1979, to mark the opening of the pub that bears his name

“In the machine-gun battle which ensued, our red tracers criss-crossed for some seconds, then – bang! – a yellow explosion filled my cockpit. My engine was hit and I began to lose height. The last I saw of the Dornier was as it, too, slid downwards into the clouds.

“I bailed out, watching sadly as my Hurricane ‘K for King’ plummeted into the North Sea. Fished out myself by the Hull trawler Cap Finisterre, I got back to Martlesham Heath that evening in time for the dusk patrol ? this time in Hurricane ‘Q for Queen’.”

The following day, July 12, enemy aircraft attacked a shipping convoy off Felixstowe. A pilot from 17 Squadron managed to destroy a Dornier, while a colleague shot down another off Orfordness. A pilot from 151 Squadron claimed another Nazi plane in the same area, while two other fliers accounted for a Heinkel HE 111. Other pilots defeated a further clutch of enemy aircraft that day.

One of those involved was Sgt Leonard “Josey” Jowitt. The Hurricane pilot with 85 Squadron was 28. While attacking a Heinkel, his plane crashed off Felixstowe at 8.50am. He is remembered on a memorial in Surrey.

Flight Lieutenant Peter Townsend, left (Image: Archant)

It was a bad morning. Flying Officer James Allan was a 25-year-old New Zealander with 151 Squadron, based at Martlesham Heath. At 9.45am his plane ditched in the North Sea after a fight with a Dornier off Orfordness as he patrolled with a shipping convoy. His name is also on the memorial.

The station was being used almost exclusively as an advance operational centre, with aircraft from many squadrons coming and going. It was the latest chapter in Martlesham Heath’s proud history. The story began on January 16, 1917, when it was used as a Royal Flying Corps airfield, becoming home to the Aeroplane Experimental Unit when it moved from Wiltshire.

It was rechristened the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment in 1924. Alan Smith, archivist for Martlesham Heath Aviation Society’s museum, says: “For the first 22 years it tested virtually every British aircraft produced, civilian as well as military.” Those evaluated in the skies of Suffolk included the Sopwith Camel (used on the Western Front in 1917), the Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire.

With the outbreak of war in 1939, Martlesham Heath became a home for fighters. “We were, during the Battle of Britain, regarded as a forward base,” explains Alan, then a schoolboy in Clacton-on-Sea. “Squadrons would come from airfields more inland and share and use the base. Early on, aircraft were escorting convoys up the east coast, because the initial attacks by Germany were on shipping as much as anything. Martlesham Heath was incredibly busy. It was at the front line – a very active airfield right through the battle.”

A Spitfire (Image: Archant)

On August 15 about a dozen Junkers and Messerschmitts dive-bombed the aerodrome for an intense five minutes. Bombs estimated at 500lb each were dropped, along with incendiaries.

Two bombs did wreck the guard room and workshops; others broke virtually all the glass in the officers’ mess. The most damage was done when a British Fairey Battle plane holding 1,000lb of bombs exploded on the ground, probably when set ablaze by machine-gun fire.

There were seven casualties in all – two serious – but no deaths.

The experiences of Hurricane pilot Sgt Alex Girdwood the same day demonstrated what life was like at the sharp end. The man from 257 Squadron flew six times ? a typical day during the Battle of Britain.

Douglas and Lady Bader at the opening of the Douglas Bader pub at Martlesham Heath in 1979

It started at 5.20am with a 30-minute transfer flight from Debden, south of Saffron Walden, then three stints of convoy patrol for four hours. At 3pm, after a 45-minute rest, his group was scrambled, but didn’t make contact with the Luftwaffe. Then, at 5pm, there was another scramble, lasting an hour.

It ended with him floating down onto Foulness Island, Essex. His plane crashed at a farm and was buried in the soft ground by the force of the impact. Girdwood said he and the group leader had come across a big formation of Heinkels. They’d attacked one, firing until it began to smoke and go down.

“As I broke away, bullets entered my cockpit, which exploded and caught fire. After a struggle I managed to bail out and, as I fell, succeeded in pulling the ripcord and untwisting the lines which wound round my leg. A toe of my right foot was fractured by a bolt, which was forced into it by a bullet.

“I received some burns and bruises. Subsequently, I found that the He 111 had crashed near Foulness just beside my own plane. Two of the wounded German airmen were brought to the same hospital at Foulness as myself.”

Douglas Bader (fourth from right) with fellow pilots in the summer of 1940 - though not at Martlesham Heath

While victory in the Battle of Britain was engineered by bravery, skill and the nation pulling together, Alan says the Nazis also made key mistakes. They were misled by exaggerations (or plain mistakes) about their successes, and in late August, 1940, bombers heading for RAF airfields accidentally destroyed homes in London, killing civilians. Churchill ordered the bombing of Berlin in response, which prompted Hitler to switch emphasis – attacking our cities, rather than airfields and aviation industries.

At Martlesham, the Americans arrived in 1943. Hard runways were laid and a control tower built.

The RAF would stay until 1963. It became a research station. “Blind-landing was virtually developed there – landing in fog and poor visibility,” says Alan.

He says 55 different squadrons feature in the wartime history of the airfield. Some would be there for a week, others five or six months.

The site is today covered by, among other things, the large modern community of Martlesham Heath, part of the A12, a Tesco store, Suffolk Constabulary headquarters and BT’s Adastral Park research campus.

There are some reminders of the past, however. For instance, a patch of the original Tarmac, outside the Douglas Bader. “The pub is virtually in the middle of where the two runways crossed.”

There’s a pub named after one of Britain’s most famous Second World War flying aces – he opened it in 1979 – but how strong were his links with Martlesham Heath?

Alan Smith says Bader, based at Duxford in Cambridgeshire, came to the Suffolk airfield on just one day during the Battle of Britain – to join up with another squadron for an attack of some sort.

“There’s a lovely little story. Robert Stanford Tuck [another ace] was there – a flight leader at the time. Apparently Douglas Bader stomped up and said ‘I say, old chap, what’s the score?’ Stanford Tuck looked round and said ‘We don’t know. We haven’t had any orders yet.’ ‘Oh,’ says Bader, and stomps off. As he went, apparently Tuck says ‘And you want to get rid of that bloody scarf.’ ‘Why?’ says Bader. ‘If you have to bail out, you might hang yourself.’”

Bader did have a reputation for annoying some people, Alan says...

There was a stronger link with Martlesham Heath. Just before Christmas, 1940 – after the Battle of Britain – Bader did come to the airfield with 242 Squadron, which he was leading. He stayed only to the end of about February, however, says Alan.

Douglas Bader is a legendary pilot, though, his story told in a book and film in the 1950s.

At the end of 1931 he had crashed and lost both legs while trying to fly aerobatics. He was retired, unwillingly, but was accepted back as a pilot when the war started.

The Battle of Britain got its name from a speech by Prime Minister Winston Churchill on June 18, 1940, about three weeks before the recognised start of the action.

He said: “…what General Weygand has called The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire”.