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RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk was built for a single, brutally practical wartime purpose: to give damaged aircraft a place to land safely after returning from operations over occupied Europe and Germany. Opened in 1943 (initially under the name RAF Sutton Heath), Woodbridge formed part of the RAF’s Emergency Landing Ground (ELG) system alongside RAF Manston in Kent and RAF Carnaby in Yorkshire. These were not normal stations with resident operational squadrons. They were ‘life-saving runways’ positioned on the east coast to catch aircraft limping back across the North Sea – low on fuel, shot up by flak, or suffering undercarriage, brake or hydraulic failures.
Emergency landing ground design
Woodbridge’s design tells its story. It was fitted with an extra-long runway about 9,000 feet (2,700 m) long and an extraordinary 750 feet (230 m) wide – roughly five times the width of a typical runway of the period – plus additional clear areas at each end. The runway was divided into three lanes, allowing air traffic control to allocate landing lines and reduce the risk that one incident would block the whole strip. The goal was simple: if a bomber came in with an unsafe undercarriage or failing brakes, there had to be room for it to touch down, veer, and stop without colliding with another aircraft or ploughing into obstacles.
Aircraft and users
Because it was an emergency field, Woodbridge could see almost any Allied type returning from war: RAF heavy bombers such as Avro Lancasters and Handley Page Halifaxes, USAAF B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators, and a wide range of fighters and smaller aircraft escorting or conducting separate missions. A significant proportion of emergency landings were caused not by combat damage but by weather – especially fog. To combat this, Woodbridge could employ FIDO (Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation): petrol pumped through pipes and burned to create walls of flame that lifted fog and revealed the runway. It was dramatic, fuel-hungry, and effective – exactly the sort of extreme engineering solution the air war demanded.
Key wartime moments
Woodbridge is also linked to one of the war’s most remarkable intelligence windfalls. On 13 July 1944 a German Junkers Ju 88 G-1 night fighter landed at Woodbridge by mistake. The aircraft carried up-to-date radar and homing equipment used against RAF bombers, including FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2 and FuG 227 Flensburg, among other systems. Because it arrived intact, British specialists were able to examine the equipment rapidly and devise countermeasures – an example of how a navigation error could unexpectedly shift the technical duel of the air war.
The station was considered as an operational base for ‘Operation Aphrodite,’ the U.S. plan to use explosive-filled B-17 drones against hardened targets and V-weapon sites, and modified aircraft were associated with the idea – again reflecting how the airfield’s clear approaches and specialised runway made it attractive for unusual projects. But Woodbridge’s main success was day-to-day: getting aircraft and crews down safely. By the end of the war, thousands of aircraft had made emergency landings there, turning a single runway into a quiet instrument of survival.
After the war
Post-war, Woodbridge supported experimental work and specialist units, including blind-landing evaluation, before later Cold War redevelopment alongside RAF Bentwaters. For WW2 visitors and researchers, however, the essential story is the ELG mission: Woodbridge was built not to launch raids, but to bring damaged aircraft home – and to save lives at the very end of long, dangerous operations.