Page 40 - World Airshow News Autumn 2024

...A WORLD WAR II HIStORy tOuR.

We were entertained with Glenn Miller-style big
band music at The Red Feather Club at Horham.

awaiting the return of their crews – it’s Parham Airfield in Framlingham, the 2,000 heavy bombers and over 1,000
easy to visualize an airfield full of B-17s home of the 390 Bomb Group Memo- fighter planes on a single mission. By the
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with engines running ready to depart on rial Air Museum. Like Thorpe Abbotts, end of the war in May 1945, the Eighth
a mission deep into Nazi Germany. Parham has a restored control tower and had flown more than 600,000 sorties and
an extensive museum full of 390 BG ar- dropped over 670,000 tons of bombs.
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HORHAm AND FRAmLINGHAm tifacts. There is also an impressive display The bomber boys of the Eighth Air
After Thorpe Abbotts, our group made dedicated to the British Resistance, a gue- Force became the “Masters of the Air”
the short drive over to Station 119/Hor- rilla army that was secretly organized to over Europe, but the cost was exceed-
ham, home of the 95 Bomb Group, the resist a German invasion that never came. ingly high. Two-thirds of the men who
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first American bombers to fly a daylight The three bomb groups we visited flew into battle with the Eighth would be
raid over Berlin. The 95 was also the (100 , 95 , and 390 ) comprised the 13 killed, wounded, or captured. By war’s
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only Eighth Air Force Bomb Group to Combat Wing of the Eighth Air Force’s end, over 26,000 Eighth Air Force airmen
receive the Distinguished Unit Citation Third Air Division. The three groups fre- had been killed in action, more fatalities
three times. quently flew alongside each other as part than the entire U.S. Marine Corps. An ad-
Today, Horham is home to the 95 of massive bomber formations that filled ditional 28,000 airmen from the Eighth
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Bomb Group Museum and The Red the skies with hundreds or thousands of became prisoners of war.
Feather Club, a recreation of a 1940s airplanes Their heroism was unmatched and the
NCO social club. At the Red Feather world is forever grateful for their service
Club, our group was served afternoon tea tHE GREAtESt GENERAtION and sacrifice. They truly deserve the title,
and treated to 1940s big band music and Over the course of World War II, the “The Greatest Generation”.
swing dancing by local volunteers. U.S. Eighth Air Force grew into the most
The next morning, we were off to our powerful and destructive instrument of
third and final bomber base, Station 153/ war up to that time, able to send over

www.airshowmag.com 40 Quarter 4, 2024