RAF Fersfield — USAAF Station 554

Last updated 5 July 2026 · numbered references [n] point to the sources below

Fersfield is the airfield that history nearly forgot on purpose. It was built to the same full bomber-station specification as its famous neighbours — but it never had a resident bomb group, no thousands of airmen living out the war, no stream of veterans returning afterwards to remember it. It was kept deliberately quiet, used by small detachments who flew in, did something extraordinary, and left. Twice, what they did made history.

Where is it, and why “Fersfield”?

The airfield lies in south Norfolk, roughly 16 miles south-west of Norwich, near Diss [3]. The land actually straddles the parishes of Bressingham and Kenninghall — the county’s heritage record notes the site isn’t strictly inside Fersfield parish at all [4].

When the site was allocated to the American Eighth Air Force in 1942 it was named Winfarthing, USAAF Station 140. Built during 1943–44 as a satellite of RAF Knettishall (the 388th Bomb Group’s base over the Suffolk border), it was renamed Fersfield, becoming USAAF Station 554 [1][2][6].

Built to full spec — and kept empty

Fersfield was a Class A bomber airfield: a 6,000-foot main runway with two 4,200-foot secondaries, two T-2 hangars, and dispersed Nissen-hut accommodation recorded as being for around 2,000 people [3]. The Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust records it opening on 3 April 1944 [2].

But no bomb group ever moved in. Instead, in July 1944 a detachment of the 562nd Bomb Squadron, 388th Bomb Group arrived from Knettishall [1][5], joined by a US Navy special air unit — and Fersfield became the launch site for one of the strangest weapons programmes of the war.

The drone missions (1944)

From Fersfield the USAAF and US Navy ran projects Aphrodite, Batty and Anvil: attempts to turn war-weary bombers into radio-controlled flying bombs, packed with explosives and aimed at targets no conventional raid could crack. One of those missions killed Lt Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. — elder brother of the future President [1]. The full story, told properly: Operation Aphrodite and the death of Joe Kennedy.

The Copenhagen raid (1945)

On 21 March 1945, RAF Mosquitos of the Second Tactical Air Force lifted off from Fersfield and flew at rooftop height across the North Sea to destroy the Gestapo headquarters in the centre of Copenhagen — a raid of astonishing precision, and of terrible cost. The full story: Operation Carthage.

Afterwards

The RAF took the station over at the end of 1944 and used it for training and staging [2][3]. Then the war ended, and Fersfield’s short, strange service life ended with it.

The land went back to farming. In 1951 the old runways briefly roared again — period film survives of motor-racing meetings held on the airfield that year [8].

Today most of the concrete is gone, but the perimeter track survives as farm roads, hut ruins stand in the hedgerows, and one wartime hangar is very much alive: it’s now the Fersfield Grain Store, holding over 30,000 tonnes of malting barley a year [4][7]. In November 2024 a granite memorial to the airfield’s wartime past was unveiled beside it [2][7]. What you can still see, and how to visit without troubling the people who live and work there: What remains today and Visiting respectfully.