052004 - RAF CONINGSBY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR 

By Robert Perry

RAF CONINGSBY IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Robert Perry.  RAF Coningsby played an integral part in the Allied strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War, and paid a heavy price for it. Operations between March 1941 and May 1945 cost the lives of 1,096 Coningsby airmen, whose average age was twenty-one. Inadequate aircraft and difficulties in target identification plagued operations in the early years, culminating in 617 Squadron’s disastrous attack on the Dortmund-Ems Canal in September 1943. The subsequent introduction of a Pathfinder Force within No. 5 Group defined all operations from D-Day onwards, and raids continued out of Coningsby right up to the armistice.