RAF Staplehurst
| Royal Air Force Staplehurst USAAF Station AAF-413  .svg){kind=small} 
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| Located Near Staplehurst, Kent, United Kingdom | |
Staplehurst Airfield, two weeks before D-Day on 21 May 1944. Note the blister hangar just to the west of the 19 runway. The improvised technical site and airfield station is located to the north of the 10 runway.
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 RAF Staplehurst, shown within Kent
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| Coordinates | 51°09′42″N 000°34′18″E / 51.16167°N 0.57167°E |
| Type | Military airfield |
| Code | SH |
| Site information | |
| Controlled by |
 Royal Canadian Air Force (1943-1944) United States Army Air Forces (1944) |
| Site history | |
| Built | 1943 |
| In use | 1943-1944 |
| Battles/wars |
European Theatre of World War II Air Offensive, Europe July 1942 - May 1945 |
| Garrison information | |
| Garrison | RCAF Fighter Command Ninth Air Force |
| Occupants | Nos. 401, 411 and 41 RCAF 363d Fighter Group |
RAF Staplehurst is a former World War II airfield in Kent, England. The airfield is located approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of Staplehurst; about 38 miles (61 km) southeast of London.
Opened in 1943, Staplehurst was a prototype for temporary Advanced Landing Grounds built in France after D-Day, and as the Allied forces moved east across France and Germany. It was used by the Royal Air Force, Canadian and the United States Army Air Forces. It was closed in September 1944.
Today the airfield is a mixture of agricultural fields with no recognizable remains, except a memorial now near the site.
The USAAF Ninth Air Force required several temporary Advanced Landing Ground (ALG) along the channel coast prior to the June 1944 Normandy invasion to provide tactical air support for the ground forces landing in France.
Staplehurst was known as USAAF Station AAF-413 for security reasons by the USAAF during the war, and by which it was referred to instead of location. It's USAAF Station Code was "SH".
Staplehurst was chosen to house one of the Ninth Air Force's two P-51B Mustang fighter groups (The other being the 354th Fighter Group), and the 363rd Fighter Group moved into Staplehurst on 14 April from RAF Rivenhall. The group consisted of the following operational squadrons and fuselage codes:
On 30 June the 363rd was alerted for movement to the Continent, its new base being the airfield at Maupertus (ALG A-15), near Cherbourg.
Upon its release from military use, within a year there was little left to indicate that these 400 acres (1.6 km2) to the east of Staplehurst village had once been a thriving fighter airfield. Today, the farmland that was once RAF Staplehurst is unrecognizable as anything other than farmland. The location of the airfield can only be discerned by looking at the aerial photography and following the path of Chickenden Lane, which runs almost parallel the former main 10/28 runway. A few wartime buildings may be in agricultural use just to the northeast of the former airfield.
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Wikipedia