by Wickhambrook History Society
For their July outing, the History Society visited the 100thBomb Group Memorial Museum at Thorpe Abbots near Diss. The very well restored buildings and the display of artifacts such as uniforms, photographs and medals are well worth the trip to this small museum in the middle of fields of grain.
The Americans built the whole thing in record time in 1943 and the statistics are astonishing. They built eleven miles of concrete roads, three and a half miles of sewers, five miles of water mains and three hundred buildings at a cost then of a million pounds.
There were four squadrons on the station and 768 officers and men and 229 planes were lost.
The view from the control tower is of fields and woods but a model shows what it would have looked like during the war. Amazing to imagine!
We were very warmly welcomed and entertained by the volunteers who run the museum. It deserves more publicity.