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RAF Bovingdon, on high ground near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, was built in 1941-42 as a standard Class A bomber airfield with three concrete/tarmac runways and extensive dispersal areas. Although it began as an RAF Bomber Command station, Bovingdon quickly became a key American base in the Eighth Air Force system, known to the USAAF as Station 112. Its wartime importance was less about one long-term combat unit and more about what it enabled: training, technical support, and the movement of men and aircraft through the European theatre.
The first major USAAF tenant was the 92nd Bombardment Group (Heavy), deployed from Florida in 1942 with Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses. The group’s ‘Triangle B’ tail marking became associated with the early, difficult phase of the daylight bombing campaign. Bovingdon’s B-17 crews flew a small number of combat missions in September and October 1942, but the airfield’s most influential role soon emerged: it became a Combat Crew Replacement and theatre-indoctrination base. This mattered enormously because new bomber groups arriving in Britain needed standardised training, procedures, and formation discipline before they were committed to operational stations and the heavy losses of the air offensive over Europe.
In January 1943 the 92nd moved to RAF Alconbury to continue operations, but part of the unit – most notably the 326th Bomb Squadron – remained behind at Bovingdon to form the core of the 11th Combat Crew Replacement Center Group. Using B-17E aircraft, Bovingdon introduced countless Eighth Air Force crews to local flying conditions, radio procedures, gunnery practices, formation work, and emergency drills that were essential for survival on combat tours. In effect, Bovingdon acted as a ‘finishing school’ that quietly underwrote the operational effectiveness of the wider bomber force.
The station also supported Eighth Air Force Headquarters functions and specialised technical activity. A mix of aircraft types appeared on the airfield as units tested equipment, ferried personnel, and carried out liaison tasks. Bovingdon even acquired a certain wartime celebrity: accounts record that General Eisenhower’s personal B-17 was housed here, and the base hosted well-known Americans connected to wartime film and reporting work, including figures such as Clark Gable and James Stewart. Those details point to Bovingdon’s unusual position in the USAAF network – close enough to London and major headquarters to be useful, yet built as a heavy-duty airfield capable of handling the big bombers.
In September 1944 the 11th Combat Crew Replacement Center Group was disbanded and Bovingdon became an important air terminal for the European Air Transport Service. Thousands of servicemen rotated homeward through the station, and the airfield’s routine shifted from training and technical support to the logistics of movement: schedules, manifests, and the constant flow of aircraft carrying people rather than bombs. After the war Bovingdon returned to RAF control and later developed a long civilian afterlife, but its WWII story is already complete without that epilogue. It was the sort of airfield that rarely grabs headlines yet shaped outcomes: a place where crews learned to fly together, where headquarters functions were supported, and where the machinery of the Eighth Air Force kept turning day after day.