RAF Tangmere

RAF Tangmere stands on the flat land of West Sussex, a few miles north-east of Chichester. The airfield opened in 1917 as a Royal Flying Corps training ground and later became a US training base for Handley-Page bombers. Between the wars it housed No. 1 and No. 43 Squadrons flying Gloster Gamecocks and Hawker Hurricanes. The station grew into a fighter airfield as war approached, with faster monoplanes arriving in the late 1930s. The airfield played a key part in the Battle of Britain and later operations. Wing Commander Douglas Bader led the Tangmere wing, while Johnnie Johnson scored most kills of any Western Allied ace. A German raid on 16 August 1940 killed twenty people but the station stayed in service. The Special Duty Service used Tangmere Cottage for secret agent flights, and many airmen who died are buried in St Andrew’s churchyard. Today the site is a quiet village green with a few wartime buildings left. A plaque marks the cottage where agents met, and another outside the old Bader Arms honours the legless ace. The churchyard holds graves of Allied and German airmen tended by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Visitors walk past the memorials and see the flat runways now used by light aircraft.