Strana 108
residents and several hundred buildings.
By that, I don‘t mean the airport itself with
its runways, taxiways and hardstands. Today,
with a few exceptions, none of that remains.
But even those exceptions are well worth
seeing. The museum itself, of course, breathes
the history of the ‚Bloody Hundredth‘; the
control tower amazes visitors with the stories
and artefacts it contains. If you know where
to look, you can stand on a hardstand where
B-17s with famous names and stories were
once parked, walk along the remains of the
main runway and touch a tree that you will
recognise from old photographs showing B-17s
parked there.
Part of the base‘s infrastructure has
been repurposed. Farmers use sections of
the taxiways and hardstands for their own
purposes. The concrete, which was used by
four-engine bombers to taxi before taking off
into the freezing blue skies above the continent,
is still in use and in perfect condition. I am
continually fascinated by how, if you know
what to look for, you can still see traces of that
past in the landscape. Traces of how this area
was shaped during the brief period from 1942
to 1945 by the air bases that were built here at
an incredible pace and then used for just two
or three years.
It took me several visits over many years to
understand this landscape and truly connect
the old maps and base blueprints with the
landscape as it is today. I have always found
it fascinating, but despite Ron‘s knowledgeable
descriptions, on many of my visits I would
admire the remnants of building structures or
bomb shelters hidden among the trees without
ever knowing exactly where we were. This
year, for various reasons, I have been studying
the Thorpe Abbotts base drawings quite
extensively, not just the combat operations
of the unit stationed there, but also specific
locations and buildings, from a distance. When
I finally found myself at the site three weeks
ago, everything started to fall into place and
I began to connect specific locations with the
terrain, maps and old photographs.
TAIL END CHARLIE
This used to be Hardstand No. 50 - the spot where the B-17G 43-37517
“Heaven Can Wait” once rested.
Upper Street, part of the village of Billingford, which was partially “blended” with the southern area
of the base on photo taken between 1943 - 1945, and today.
The evening sky above the site where “Heaven Can Wait” crashed in January 1945.
INFO Eduard108
September 2026