PRESS RELEASE- from Kenneth Bannerman
25 October 2024
Major Norfolk airfields Fersfield and Pulham to be honoured with the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust’s latest memorials
As a result of long planning and co-operation between the Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust (ABCT) – the world’s first national airfield charity – and various more local elements, and following very successful similar unveilings across Norfolk in more recent times, two further memorials will be unveiled during Friday and Saturday 8-9 November 2024 to commemorate Fersfield and Pulham Airfields.
Fersfield opened during the second half of World War Two in April 1944 designed as a bomber airfield. It became best known for its participation in Operation Aphrodite, whereby Boeing B-17s filled with high explosives were converted into radio-controlled flying bombs. This was an extremely dangerous duty, and one casualty was Joseph Kennedy, brother of future US President John F. Kennedy, who died during a mission. After the Americans left, Fersfield switched to Royal Air Force control and continued to give excellent assistance in primarily support and training roles, notably stepping in to assist famous Norfolk airfield Swanton Morley which ABCT honoured with a similar memorial in August 2023. Closed during March 1946, and subsequently for a brief period in the early 1950s used as a motor racing circuit, some parts of Fersfield survive today amid a mixture of agriculture and industry.
Pulham remains one of Britain’s most famous airship stations. First opened in February 1916, airships initially carried out operational maritime patrols before experimental work predominated for well over the next decade. One famous episode in Pulham’s history was the arrival of airship R.34 on its pioneering return leg flight from the USA to Britain in July 1919. The R.101 disaster of October 1930 to all intents most unfortunately ended all airship development in Britain but Pulham managed to survive in other RAF capacities, notably being employed for ammunition storage, until eventual closure in February 1958. Not much now survives of this airfield but one of the two main airship sheds still stands at Cardington in Bedfordshire after being transferred there in the late 1920s. The Pennoyer Centre in nearby Pulham St Mary village also remembers to very good effect what is still frequently referred to locally as Pulham Air Station.
Both memorials are of the main full-sized standardised design already widely utilised by ABCT https://www.abct.org.uk/airfield-markers/marker-programme/. The charity’s objective in this regard is to eventually commemorate each known major airfield in the United Kingdom with one of two forms of standardised granite memorial. Well over 200 have already been unveiled – following huge national public demand for them – to clearly major effect, with hundreds more being planned.
Event details as follows:
Fersfield Airfield
https://www.abct.org.uk/airfields/airfield-finder/fersfield-winfarthing
Friday 8 November 2024, 10.30 am, on SW side of airfield alongside Airfield Road, NW of Diss and NE of Fersfield village
Postcode (nearest) IP22 2FF, What3Words: grew.lease.upholding
