Full WW2 control tower details and photos for this wartime airfield are coming soon. Please check back later as this is work progress. If you would like to contribute information or photos please get in touch.
RAF Beccles in Suffolk was one of the last wartime airfields completed in East Anglia, built to a standard pattern with concrete runways and extensive hardstandings. Construction began in 1943, but by the time the airfield was ready the USAAF no longer required it, a common wartime twist as priorities and basing plans changed quickly. As a result, Beccles passed briefly through Bomber Command administration before becoming a Coastal Command station focused on air-sea rescue and maritime support.
From August 1944 Beccles was operated by No. 16 Group, RAF Coastal Command. The airfield’s role was practical and urgent: support crews and aircraft tasked with rescuing airmen forced down in the North Sea and approaches to the Channel, and provide coverage for operations that involved anti-shipping patrols and coastal sorties. In this period, Beccles hosted a remarkable variety of aircraft types, reflecting the mixed duties of Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm detachments.
A key resident unit was No. 280 Squadron, which operated Vickers Warwick aircraft fitted to carry an under-slung rescue dinghy. The Warwick’s task was to locate survivors, drop life-saving equipment and coordinate with surface rescue forces. This work intensified as bomber and fighter activity over Europe peaked and damaged aircraft limped back across the sea. For every headline raid, there were also ditchings, forced landings and crews who owed their lives to the patient, repetitive rescue sorties flown from stations like Beccles.
Beccles also saw specialist activity. Records note periods when units trained with unusual weapons and aircraft combinations, including Mosquito-related specialist training and Fleet Air Arm types such as Swordfish and Albacores. The Fleet Air Arm presence was organised under the ‘stone frigate’ administrative system, with the Beccles facilities known as HMS Hornbill II. This blend of RAF and naval aviation is typical of late-war Coastal Command stations, where personnel and aircraft types rotated through for short, task-focused detachments.
Flying ended in 1945 and the airfield entered a new life, but its wartime identity is clear: a late-built East Anglian station that found its true purpose not in strategic bombing but in saving lives and supporting maritime operations when the air war reached its most intense phase.
Air-sea rescue crews measured success differently from bomber crews: not in targets destroyed, but in lives saved, and the speed with which survivors could be found before exposure and exhaustion took hold.
Coastal Command stations were often multi-service in feel, with RAF and Fleet Air Arm detachments sharing airfield space according to operational needs.
Beccles’ wartime period was short, but it coincided with one of the busiest phases of air operations over the North Sea, when the demand for rescue coverage reached a peak.
For visitors and researchers today, the most rewarding approach is to combine surviving site evidence (perimeter tracks, dispersal loops, building footprints) with squadron ORBs, logbooks and local testimony, which together recreate how the station worked day to day.