Air Force Index

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies. If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.     Site Home     WW2 Home     Add Stories     WW2 Search     Library     Help & FAQs  WW2 Features     Airfields     Allied Army     Allied Air Forces     Allied Navy     Axis Forces     Home Front     Battles     Prisoners of War     Allied Ships     Women at War     Those Who Served     Day-by-Day     Library     The Great War  Submissions     Add Stories     Time Capsule     TWMP on Facebook     Childrens Bookshop  FAQ's     Help & FAQs     Glossary     Volunteering     Contact us     News     Bookshop     About Advertisements World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945

No. 627 Squadron Royal Air Force    No 627 Squadron was formed from a nucleus from No 139 Squadron, at Oakington, on 12th November 1943. It flew Mosquito fighter-bombers was part of the Light Night Striking Force, 8 Group, Bomber Command. It performed night attacks on Germany and pathfinder duties, supplementing Bomber Command's major raids. In April 1944 it was transferred to 5 Group, moved to Woodhall Spa and carried out target marking, photographic reconnaissance, night raids and daylight operations. It was renumbered No 109 Squadron on 1st October 1945. Airfields No. 627 Squadron flew from: RAF Oakington, Cambridgeshire from 12th November 1943 (formed. Mosquito IV. 8 Group) RAF Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire from 15th April 1944 (Mosquito XX, MOsquito XXV, Mosquito XVI. 5 Group)   9th May 1944 New target marking method deployed successfuly 15th August 1945 Tiger Force If you can provide any additional information, please add it here. Logbooks Do you have a WW2 Flying Log Book in your possession? If so it would be a huge help if you could add logbook entries to our new database. Thank you. View Logbook entries Those known to have served with No. 627 Squadron Royal Air Force during the Second World War 1939-1945. Beeching John Benjamin. W/O Bennett DFC. James H.. F/Lt. Gibson VC, DSO, DFC Guy Penrose. Wg. Cdr. (d.19th Sept 1944) Pike Herbert John. The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List Records of No. 627 Squadron Royal Air Force from other sources. The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website. Announcements The Wartime Memories Project has been running for 24 years. If you would like to support us, a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting and admin or this site will vanish from the web. 22nd April 2024 - Please note we currently have a huge backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263973 your information is still in the queue, please do not resubmit, we are working through them as quickly as possible. Looking for help with Family History Research?   Please read our Family History FAQ's The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors. If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web. If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation. Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the War? Our Library contains an ever growing number diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text. We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates. If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page. Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to WW2. We would like to obtain digital copies of any documents or photographs relating to WW2 you may have at home. If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted. World War 1 One ww1 wwII second 1939 1945 battalion Did you know? We also have a section on The Great War. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations. Want to know more about No. 627 Squadron Royal Air Force? There are:2001 items tagged No. 627 Squadron Royal Air Force available in our Library   These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War. F/Lt. James H. Bennett DFC. 627 Squadron When I started work at a Customs & Excise office in Boston in 1980, my boss there was Jim Bennett. A tall old gent with a lovely warm, quiet personality. He retired just a year or so later but by then I had heard from him his wartime history as a RAF pilot (Flt Lt). He trained in Canada, then flew Hampdens at Coningsby (presumably with 109 Sqn). He later transferred to 627 Sqn at Woodhall Spa, piloting a Mosquito. I understand he gained his DFC during operations over the Low Countries. This is what he told me, but without detail. When the war ended, he was training up for Tiger Force, which would have entailed shipping out to the Far East to take the war to the Japanese. He was a Lincolnshire lad, flying his War from his home county. I believe he grew up in Market Rasen. He gave me an Air Navigation book which I still treasure. It carries his signature. I first lived in Mareham-le-Fen, just 3 miles from Coningsby. I regularly walked my dog in Woodhall Woods, which contains the remains of the RAF bomb depot adjacent to what's left of the airfield. Both my daughters were born into the Mareham home I then occupied, and strangely one of them is now an RAF pilot. My father served in RAF 1940 to 1945, but not as aircrew. Andy Add to this record. Wg. Cdr. Guy Penrose Gibson VC, DSO, DFC 627th Sqd. (d.19th Sept 1944) 109 Squadron is showing a Mosquito loss in 1944. In 1943 109 Sqn was merged to 627 Sqn. The loss of the Mosquito in 1944 you have is incorrect. The Mosquito loss in 1944 is one of the most famous and was September 18/19 1944. The Pilot Wing Commander Guy Gibson DFC DSO his navigator was Sqn Ldr Jim Warwick. They were on an operation as Pathfinder and Gibson was MASTER BOMBER when they crashed on the way home in Holland at Steenbergen where there is a memorial at the crash site and in a local park. Jim Drummond Add to this record. Herbert John "Bert" Pike Carpenter 109 & 627 Sqds. Grandfather of Sarah Pike Ellis remained with the Squadron for the duration of the war. J. Drummond Add to this record. W/O John Benjamin "Curly" Beeching 169 Squadron I was stationed at Spitalgate being transferred from Cranwell in the early part of 1944. Both of these places were equipped with Blenheim Mark 1 and Mark IV twin enginged aircraft. I was a pilot being trained for night-fighters and these aircraft were considered to be a suitable transition, which, although fairly obsolescent, they were. Pilots stationed there were given a pretty thorough training, including Standard Beam Approach and 'Day-Night', a system using dark goggles simulating night flying. We were subsequently posted to a night-fighter Operational Training Unit, (OTU), either to Cranfield in Bedfordshire or Charter Hall in Scotland, where we did a further transition via Bristol Beauforts, Beaufighters and subsequently on to De Havilland Mosquitoes, before finishing up, generally, on a 100 Group, Bomber Command station somewhere in Norfolk. I was on 169 Squadron at Great Massingham, from where I flew my operations over Germany, but was transferred to Pathfinder Mosquitoes on 627 Squadron at war's end to engage in operations from Okinawa against the Japanese, but the atomic bombs knocked that on the head. Spitalgate was a pretty good station, being built in peacetime with comfortable accommodation and messes; a far cry from most Bomber Command places rapidly established for war-time. About the only dramatic incident at Spitalgate which I can recall was having to land a Blenheim with one wheel fully retracted, due to a hydraulic failure, but apart from a bent propeller the aircraft wasn't very damaged at all. I was twenty years old when that happened and things like that during the war never even made the local paper ! Sic transit and all that. I regret I have no photos. John Beeching Add to this record. Recomended Reading. Available at discounted prices.

Links Suggest a link

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.