VE80: From Blenheims to rebuilding

RAF Bicester was fit to burst. Its life as a training base for bomber pilots was a distant memory, as planes had outgrown the grass expanse that had christened the Handley Page Halifax and helped make the legend of the Bristol Blenheim, and instead the role for 1945 was one of logistics. 

That meant forwarding hundreds of tons of equipment across the country and to the far reaches of the campaigns across Europe, which were edging towards victory. The Operational Training Unit (OTU) had ceded to the Forward Equipment Unit (FEU) at RAF Bicester in the weeks and months following D-Day, and in early 1945 ranks had swollen to more than 1000 personnel being camped around the airfield. The FEU began the year with a new name, 246 Maintenance Unit (MU), and a new Station Commander in Wing Commander PL Hancox, OBE, but with the same task at hand. 

According to DS Blee’s A History of Royal Air Force Station Bicester, that could mean moving 1000 tons of equipment a week as the war crept to a conclusion. 

The work was hard and the facilities cramped, as LAC Browne described so personally in Whizz-Bang, the site’s publication, in May 1945. He wrote of living out of tents on the windswept airfield 12 months earlier until the OTU eventually moved out, but ends with eloquence and hope. It is easy to assume that feeling was shared by thousands who had served over the past six years. Hope and an overriding sense of the unknown as to what would be next, after astonishing feats of gritty endurance.

Coincidentally, exactly five years before VE Day, on 7 May 1940, an LAC (Leading Aircraftman) Browne had dragged three fellow aircrew from a burning Hampden after they crashed on take-off from the nearby Upper Heyford. An often deadly occupational hazard that took the lives of so many from RAF Bicester and across Britain. 

Certainly the editor of Whizz-Bang noted the mixture of feeling as soon as it broke. ‘I set off for the Naafi to be present when the 9 o'clock News came over,’ they write. ‘To my amazement all was as usual; a little crowd around the counter; desultory groups around the tables; at least two ‘bods’ looking real fed-up. In fact, all in all a sober throng. 

‘Was it just British phlegm or was it a combination of relief and reaction, a mixture of memories and a looking forward to a future as uncertain as the day of “joining up”?Whatever it was, whilst we as a race and as individuals can take Victory so calmly, then a defeat will always be only a "set-back".’

Thoughts could turn to the rather more trivial, such as the future of Whizz-Bang. Its editor, who had matched succinctness with poignancy so brilliantly in his opening letter, chose also to acknowledge another potential casualty: ‘With Victory in Europe and all the changes that will go with it, both here and elsewhere, we face the fact that this may be the last issue of Whizz-Bang.’

As it was, RAF Bicester was not to be quiet for decades yet. Wg Cdr RC Browning had replaced PL Hancox as Station Commander in March and saw in VE Day but little longer. Gp Capt JHP Clarke took over on 1 June and held the position for more than a year.

Under Maintenance Command RAF Bicester was sending and receiving machinery across Europe for months later, but for years those vehicles had been wheeled rather than winged. Later into the decade still, as the No71 MU scoured the country collecting and returning crashed aircraft to RAF Bicester, it would be constantly reminded of the sacrifices of the Few and the thousands who gave everything to ably assist them.

Read more:

VE80: Whizz-Bang, May 1945

VE80: We won't forget

VE80: Dawn – May 8th, 1945