http://www.harringtonmuseum.org.uk/HistoryTempsford.htm TEMPSFORD. (BEDS.) KEPT ONE OF THE WAR'S BIGGEST SECRETS. FLY BY NIGHTS BEAT THE GESTAPO. From JAMES STUART, Tempsford. Tempsford is just a hamlet in rural Bedfordshire. Its inhabitants mostly work on the land, and none of them knew it but Tempsford held one of the big secrets of the war. They knew that down a little side road marked 'This road is closed to the Public' there was an R.A.F. Station. In the Anchor and the Wheatsheaf they saw the R.A.F. men but that was all. They had no idea of the job that they were engaged on. Names of the pilots and crews that did that job cannot yet be revealed except for one, the late Group-Captain Pickard, D.S.O. and two bars, D.F.C., the famous 'Target for tonight' pilot. When he left Bomber Command, Pickard commanded one of the two 'Special Mission' Squadrons which the R.A.F. created as a link with the under-ground movement in all occupied countries. He was an expert flyer. The R.A.F. began this branch of its work immediately after the collapse of France with one flight of a Bomber Squadron of No. 3 Group. By March 1942 Tempsford was in operation, and finally two special squadrons were being employed. From Tempsford they delivered arms, ammunition, radio sets, food and other supplies to all underground fighters from the Arctic Circle of Northern Norway to the Mediterranean shores of Southern France. From big bombers, Whitleys first, and then Stirlings and Halifaxes, they dropped their parachute containers. Every kind of supply went down from skis and sleighs for the Norwegians to the bicycles and bicycle tyres made in England, but carefully camouflaged with French names, to the resisters of Western Europe. For three years the airfield, built over what had been a large area of marsh, was the air centre of the resistance movement of all Europe. Night after night the villagers saw airplanes go off and probably heard them returning in the small hours. But they never saw the people, men and women in civilian clothes, who were driven down the prohibited road from the airfield, the men and women who had been brought to England from Occupied France under the very noses of the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo.
I think this is an interesting place to read about...the flights to occupied France etc the place where the agents started their flights toward continent...
Tempsford Hall - now the HQ of a large construction company - was used by SOE and is where the agents waited for flights. Until very recently, the remains of wartime Nissen huts could be seen in the Hall's grounds next to the A1 main road.
RAF Tempsford is a former Royal Air Force station located 2.3 miles (3.7 km) north east of Sandy, Bedfordshire, England and 4.4 miles (7.1 km) south of St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, England. As part of the Royal Air Force Special Duty Service, the airfield was perhaps the most secret airfield of the Second World War. It was home to 138 (Special Duty) Squadron and 161 (Special Duty) Squadron, which dropped supplies and agents into occupied Europe for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). 138 (SD) Squadron did the bulk of the supply and agent drops, while 161 (SD) Squadron had the Lysander flight, and did the insertion and pick-up operations in occupied Europe. RAF Tempsford Tempsford Memorial The memorial bears the names of 75 known women agents, of whom 29 were arrested, 16 were executed, three died of illnesses while imprisoned, and one committed suicide using a cyanide L-pill before being captured
the Lysander moon planes. Those things can fly at 60mph without stalling and land on a 150-meter rough air strip.
