Monument record 1294/1 - Kings Cliffe WWII Airfield

A former World War Two and post-war period military airfield, opened in 1941 and closed in 1959. It was first built as a satellite airfield for Royal Air Force fighter squadrons based at RAF Wittering but was redeveloped in 1943 as United States Army Air Force Station 367. The grass landing surfaces were replaced with hard surface runways, various types of hard standings for aircraft were added, technical and admnistrative buildings, Blister aircraft hangars and underground fuel stores were built (Type T2 hangars were also recorded at the site). The airfield was bounded to the north by the Peterborough (Roman) road and to the south by the London Midland and Southern Railway Kingscliffe Branch Line. During the war the airfield was used by the 347th, 55th and more notably the 20th Fighter Groups of the 8th Air Force. After the war the Royal Air Force used the site principally as an armaments depot, and active flying may have ceased by the mid 1950s. Since being sold in 1959, the hangars runways and perimeter track have been destroyed, although some defensive installations were noted as being extant in the late 1990s.

{1} The airfield was seconded from the RAF by the 20th Fighter Group of the 8th US Air Force.

{4} Kingscliffe Airfield: Northamptonshire, TL 028 978, opened 1941, closed 1959. The wartime airfield had two Type T2 aircraft hangars, 4 Blister and 8 "special" aircraft hangars. During the war it was used by the 8th USAAF: 1418 men were stationed there. By 1944 it had three hard runway surfaces and a number of steel or cement hard standings. Use in 1985 was said to be agriculture;

{5} Kingscliffe Airfield was first built as a satellite airfield for Royal Air Force fighter squadrons based at RAF Wittering but was redeveloped in 1943 as USAAF Station 367. The grass landing surfaces were replaced with hard surface runways, various types of hard standings for aircraft were added, technical and admnistrative buildings, Blister aircraft hangars and underground fuel stores were built. An air photograph accompanying the source taken in 1947 shows that the airfield was bounded to the north by the Peterborough (Roman) road and to the south by the London Midland and Southern Railway Kingscliffe Branch Line. During the war the airfield was used by the 347th, 55th and more notably the 20th Fighter Groups of the United States 8th Air Force. After the war the Royal Air Force used the site principally for armaments storage. Since being sold in 1959, the hangars, runways and perimeter track have been destroyed;

{6, 7} Sites of removed blast shelters associated with the airfield have been identified on aerial photographs at TL03499771, TL03549792, TL03549791, TL03579793, TL03579791.

{8} Reasons for currently not Listing the Building
The wartime structures at RAF King’s Cliffe, opened in 1941, are not listed for the following principal reasons:
* Loss of group value: the loss of the runways and hangers at King’s Cliffe greatly reduces the overall group value of the former wartime airfield and the surviving structures;
* Degree of rarity: examples of all of the types of structure at King’s Cliffe survive elsewhere, often in better condition, with many designated examples among them;
* Historic interest: King’s Cliffe’s operational role in the Second World War is acknowledged, notwithstanding the recommendation not to add its surviving structures to the List.
History
The former RAF King's Cliffe, a wartime fighter-bomber airfield, is 12 miles west of Peterborough in Northamptonshire, on high ground east of King’s Cliffe village.
Having been surveyed in 1939, construction work on the airfield commenced in 1940 and the base opened in October 1941. At first King's Cliffe was a grass satellite airfield to RAF Wittering, and the first resident RAF unit, 266 Rhodesian Squadron, equipped with Spitfire Vbs, arrived on 24 October 1941. 616 Squadron replaced it in January 1942, and in the spring its Spitfires flew as fighter escorts to bombers attacking targets on the Continent. 485 RNZAF Squadron replaced 616 in July 1942, flying several times from King’s Cliffe in support of the Dieppe landings and in support of daylight RAF bombing raids. In January 1943 the first American unit arrived, the 56th Fighter Group USAAF, flying P-47 fighters. It departed in April 1943, and hard-surfaced runways (the main one 1,700 yards long, with two subsidiaries) and an improved perimeter track were laid. At the same time station offices were built west of the airfield; administrative and technical areas to the east; a control tower of type FCW4514; the surviving fighter pens with Stanton shelters; and 12 blister and other impermanent hangers. The airfield had only one large hanger, a Callendar Hamilton at its far south-east corner. As usual, domestic sites were set some distance from the flying field, off the road to Wansford.
In May 1943 King’s Cliffe reverted to the RAF, with successive of British and Belgian squadrons flying Spitfires, before in August 1943 it was handed over to the USAAF as Station 367. It was the base of 20th Fighter Group which flew the revolutionary-looking Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter-bomber. The 20th was flying operationally from November that year on missions over France and Germany, including Berlin. Over the next 20 months, until its last mission on 25 April 1945, it continued to operate over the Continent, re-equipping with P-51 Mustangs in July 1944, and taking part in D-Day and Operation Market Garden. In all, the 20th flew 312 missions from King’s Cliffe: 6,847 P-38 sorties, and 9,015 by P-51s. After the end of hostilities there was a run-down of personnel, and the 20th Fighter Group left King’s Cliffe on 11 October 1945.
During the 20th’s time there some 1,300 American personnel based at King’s Cliffe. One notable event was what turned out to be the last hangar concert by Glenn Miller and his American Band of the AEF, on 3 October 1944, held in the Callendar Hamilton hangar. Miller’s plane disappeared on 15 December, en route to France.
After the Americans left, the base served a variety of purposes, and housed German PoWs awaiting repatriation up until July 1947. In the 1950s it was used for bomb storage, before its final closure and sale in 1959. The runways and perimeter track were broken up in 1961 and the hardcore used in the upgrading of the A1. Little effort has been made to clear the structures around the airfield perimeter which generally remains as rough grazing and scrub; the interior is under arable cultivation.
In 1983 a memorial to those who flew from King’s Cliffe was unveiled on the north edge of the former airfield. A memorial marking Glenn Miller’s last concert was erected on the site of the hangar concert early in the C21.
Details
The airfield is typical of those laid out for fighter squadrons in the early and middle parts of the war. Relatively few substantial changes appear to have been made to the airfield by the USAAF. After closure the blister hangars were removed along with the Callendar Hamilton hangar (date unknown) and the runways dug up (c.1961), but otherwise most structures have gradually decayed over the intervening 65 years. Building numbers below are those given on the Record Site Plan of December 1951.
The airfield is bounded to the north by the King’s Cliffe-Wansford road; this was hugged by the northern stretch of the perimeter track which had no major structures along it. The main runway, dug up but its line still visible, ran parallel with the perimeter track. One subsidiary runway ran across it at right-angles towards its west end, the other bisecting the two on a north-east to south-west orientation. Again, both those runways have been removed.
The principal wartime structures, all brick and concrete unless otherwise noted, can be grouped by type.
Watch Office (or Control Tower)
The Watch Office (Building 75) stands to the south-east of the field, where the perimeter track comes in at an angle. It is a windowless shell, with some of its internal walls demolished and its balcony rails missing. There are no internal features. To one side is a flat-roofed PBX Private Branch Exchange.
Battle HQ
Fairly close to the south end of the main runway, to its east, is the Battle HQ (Building 90; to the 11008/41 design), from which the defence of the airfield would have been co-ordinated in the event of attack. It is a small semi-sunken bunker-like building, with at one end a low, raised, concrete observation cupola with viewing slit. The interior is ruinous and part-flooded (not fully accessed in assessment visit).
Oakingdon-type pillboxes, and other gun posts
West of the south end of the main runway, close to the site of Jacks Green Farm (apparently standing in the war; now demolished) and marking the south-western extremity of the airfield, are two mushroom- (or Oakingdon-) type pillboxes. These are semi-sunken, circular structures, with an over-arching concrete roof supported on a central pillar which allow a 360-degree field of fire. Another pillbox of this type stands just within the field from the fighter pens at its north-west corner. Other free-standing defensive positions noted were two pairs of circular concrete drainpipe sections partly set into the ground to serve as machine-gun posts. One pair is at the south-west corner of the field near the pillboxes, another south of the west end of the main runway. A third pair has been uprooted and moved to near the control tower.
Fighter pens
The principal surviving structures at King’s Cliffe are the fighter pens. In all there were thirteen, each of E-plan form for two planes. One, demolished before 1951, stood near the east end of the main runway. The others stand in three loose groups north and south of the west end of the main runway and around the south-east perimeter where the perimeter track comes in at an angle. The pens were built to a standard Air Ministry specification. Each fighter pen consisted of three arms arranged in the shape of a curvilinear 'E', enclosing a concrete hardstanding, for two aircraft, one either side of the central arm. The arms are evident as turf covered, earth mounds, revetted by low brick walls on either side of the central mound and on the inner edge of the outer mound. The central arm measures approximately 23.8 metres long, 6.4 metres wide and 2.2 metres high. The outer mound is curved and is approximately 3 metres high and 12 metres wide. On either side of the central arm of the fighter pens and set within the curved outer mound, is a brick-lined entrance which gives access to a pre-cast, concrete, Stanton type air-raid shelter set within the central section of the outer mound. The shelter could accommodate up to 25 men during an attack. The rear of the outer curved mound contains a third entrance, originally an emergency exit. The hardstandings are surfaced in concrete and tarmac.
Individually the state of preservation is very mixed, with the best preserved overall being the six (three north and three south) at the west end of the main runway. Several retain outward-facing brick slit trenches with firing loops to the rear, and the prefabricated concrete sleeping shelters to their centres. The last are of two different types: some with a ‘gothic’ pointed interior, others flat-roofed.
Other structures
A number of other structures survive. East of the south-west group of fighter pens is a flat-roofed flight office (Building 104); what was probably another (Building 48) is just east of the south-east group of fighter pens. What were probably sleeping shelters and domestic services such as latrines remain partly standing north of the Battle HQ. Ruinous airmen’s quarters stand at the eastern extremity of the perimeter track, south of the similarly ruinous motor transport repair facilities (such as Building 9).

<1> Northamptonshire Enterprise, 1994, World War II American Airfield Nostalgia, (checked) (Pamphlet). SNN28528.

<2> Pillbox Study Group, 2012, WWII Defence Sites, (unchecked) (Gazetteer). SNN108631.

<3> Smith, J N., 2004, Airfield Focus: King's Cliffe (Book). SNN111555.

<4> Willis, S. and Holliss, B., 1987, Military airfields in the British Isles 1939-1945, p. 115 (Book). SNN111556.

<5> Freeman, R.A., 1978, Airfields of the eighth: then and now (Book). SNN111557.

<6> Pillbox Study Group, Unknown, Pillbox Study Group, e44217-21 (Website). SNN111964.

<7> Imperial War Museum, 2020, The American Air Museum, English Heritage RAF photograph: RAF_CPE_UK_1891_RS_4215 (Website). SNN112114.

<8> English Heritage, Designation Advice Report, Defence Buildings at RAF King's Cliffe (Report). SNN113190.

<9> Migrated Defence of Britain Project database record originally compiled from various sources (Database). SNN112922.

<10> Historic England, Undated, Defence of Britain, DEB01 (Archive). SNN112947.

Record last edited

Feb 10 2025 8:16PM