RAF Oakington

History of RAF Oakington

RAF Oakington

1938

Construction of aerodrome began.

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1940

A German JU 88 on a photographic reconnaissance flight was forced to land at Oakington. The base initially had Blenheims, followed by Wellingtons and then Stirlings.

Stirlings had very large wheels and consequently a long undercarriage that was often damaged by enemy fire or became faulty. Sometimes they landed and one wheel would collapse and the plane would slew off to the side of the runway. Three Stirlings finished up within 20 feet of 101 Longstanton Road. (p.35)(Memoirs of C T Warboys)

(War Torn Skies, Cambridgeshire, Julian Evan Hart)

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1941

17th June Jack Overhill records in his diary:

We heard eight or nine terrific explosions in the night and heard today that a German bomber followed a Stirling bomber home and unloaded when Oakington aerodrome lit up to receive it in ….

31st August: a Vickers Wellington crashed in Rampton after failing to gain height on take-off. Two crew members were killed. There is a memorial in Rampton churchyard.

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1942

29th July Jack wrote:

Last night as we were going to bed after 11 o’clock the sky northwards was suddenly lit up with a bright crimson glow that repeatedly blazed and faded We wondered what it was …. Heard today this light was caused by a Stirling bomber crashing at Oakington. Don’t know whether it’s true or not; can’t believe all you hear nowadays; far from it…

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The story of Michael Stuart Layton-Smith’ who served at RAF Oakington and was killed in action in February 1944′ can be found  in the entry on 48a Eden Street, Cambridge.

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In 2026 JG contacted us and sent this account of his grandfather:

William Guy Lockhart, DSO, DFC and Bar (1916–1944)
William Guy Lockhart was twenty-seven when he died, commanding No. 7 Squadron at RAF Oakington. In that short life he had been a fighter pilot, an evader, a clandestine Lysander pilot and a Pathfinder. He was also Judy’s husband and Tanya’s father. His decorations record exceptional service. His own letters, and the testimony of people who knew him, preserve something equally important: affection, humour, stubbornness and a generosity which could be expressed in the smallest acts of care.

Born on 10 June 1916, Guy’s childhood took him between Britain, China and Canada. He attended Shawnigan Lake School in British Columbia and later Sevenoaks School. Flying became central to his life before the war: a contemporary issue of Flight records him lecturing Civil Air Guard members at the West Suffolk Aero Club in April 1939. That February he had married Ruby Olivia Silvia Potter, known to the family as Judy, in Colchester.

The signed portrait he gave Judy bears the words “To my Darling Wife, with All My Love, Guy.” The surviving letters give substance to that inscription. Even during evasion and imprisonment, he was thinking about her health, the money she should receive from the RAF, and their little son, nicknamed “Leaky”. He imagined coming home, going to the cinema and making up for the summer holiday they had lost. These were the hopes of a young husband and father trying to keep a future within reach.

In July 1941, while serving with No. 74 Squadron, he was brought down over occupied France. His return depended on people who risked their own lives to help him. The Péroy family and their local network, Vincent Ansel, the Fillerins at Renty and others supplied shelter and assistance. We now have retrospective participant accounts which name Guy, while leaving some details of the rescue unresolved. Their courage belongs in his story alongside his own.

His evasion account describes a four-hour interrogation while he attempted to pass as French, despite the discovery of an English letter. He nevertheless continued his journey. In Marseille, Louis and Renée Nouveau sheltered him before he travelled towards the Pyrenees and Spain. Nouveau’s later account preserves an unexpectedly human episode: told to shave the night before an early departure, Guy insisted on shaving in the morning, cut himself badly and nearly upset the carefully arranged escape. His host had to stop the bleeding and get him to the station. It is memoir testimony, but it gives a vivid glimpse of a stubborn young man amid extraordinary danger.

His undated evasion letter describes a damaged parachute, a landing in a tree and injuries which delayed his journey. Yet the anxiety he chose to emphasise was Judy’s: “My biggest worry has been that you might think me dead”. He asked her not to give up hope. Written from hiding, those words show what the official escape report cannot: the distance between surviving an ordeal and being able to tell the person you love that you are still alive.

Spain brought internment at Miranda del Ebro. Jean-Pierre Nouveau later remembered Guy boxing a Spanish guard there before an excited audience. The accounts disagree about the result, and it remains a recollection rather than a verified sporting record. A much more intimate account of his time in the camp survives in a letter written in 1944 by Hubert Transquet, a former Belgian officer, for Guy’s infant daughter.

“You won’t be able to read this letter yourself for a long time: you have to grow up first,” Transquet began. Judy had asked for memories of her husband which Tanya could keep. Transquet wanted the child to know about a part of her father’s character which, he said, Guy had never boasted about: his kindness.

Transquet remembered Guy arriving painfully thin, hollow-eyed, with a shaven head, a scar and ill-fitting clothes, but still smiling. They became friends. When Transquet fell dangerously ill, Guy shared his own rations, spent his money to secure him a bed, and sat with him through the nights. He fed him, washed him and shaved him, and persuaded the consul to bring Horlicks. When the order suddenly came for Guy to leave, with only five minutes’ notice, he used that time to arrange for his friend’s continuing care.

Transquet recalled Guy sitting on the bed to say goodbye: “its au-revoir, not goodbye”, followed by an invitation to visit him in Colchester. They never met again. Three years later, learning of Guy’s death from a newspaper, Transquet wrote to Judy and Tanya. “I wanted you to know what a fine Gentleman he was,” he told the daughter who would never remember her father. It is testimony to courage without an aircraft, an audience or a decoration.

Guy returned to Britain in October 1941. In his letters he had promised Judy a tremendous celebration when he reached home. His correspondence holds together the strain of separation and the lively, teasing voice with which he tried to reassure her.

Guy then went back to France by air. With No. 161 Squadron he flew Lysanders on clandestine operations carrying people and wireless equipment between Britain and the Resistance. These missions required close co-operation with the reception teams waiting in dark fields. At BACCARAT II in March 1942 his aircraft became bogged down and was freed before he brought his passengers home. On the night of 31 August–1 September 1942, another landing ended in a wreck at the Junot field near Arbigny. Guy and the radio operator Pierre Delaye survived; the aircraft was burned, and Guy again escaped with help from the Resistance. Surviving photographs of that wreck make the danger tangible.

These operations depended as much on the people on the ground as on the pilot. Guy had first been sheltered by French civilians as a fugitive; he returned to carry people whose work exposed them and their hosts to arrest and death. His flying record also preserves his humour. A May 1942 Air Ministry letter to his commanding officer objected to humour in operational reports and mentioned his JELLYFISH report. The official paperwork allows a glimpse of a voice which was not always to official taste.

The danger continued after his second escape. In December 1942, another Lysander operation ended with a difficult departure and damage to the tailwheel and elevator, followed by his return to Britain. The record of these flights is a succession of particular problems solved under pressure: a field, a reception signal, passengers to collect, an aircraft to get off the ground. The men and women waiting below were part of every success.

His later service brought him to the Pathfinders, flying Mosquitos and then Lancasters. He was appointed to command the newly formed No. 692 Squadron at Graveley from 1 January 1944. The squadron records place his transfer to No. 7 Squadron on 24 March and his assumption of command at Oakington on 25 March.

Only days later, on the Nuremberg operation of 30–31 March, he flew as second pilot in Lancaster JA693, with Banks as captain. They returned. On 1 April Guy wrote from Oakington to Mrs J. H. Wilson, whose husband was missing after that raid. His signed letter expresses sympathy, explains the absence of further news and describes the precaution against publicity intended to protect a missing airman’s chance of escape. It is a moving record of the responsibility he bore for his men and their families. He knew from experience that a man reported missing might still find his way home. His letter nevertheless made no promise he could not substantiate. Within a month, Judy would face the same uncertainty.

On the night of 27–28 April 1944 Guy captained Lancaster JB676, MG-K, on the operation to Friedrichshafen. It was lost near Reichenbach, in the Lahr district. All seven men died: Guy, John Johnson, John Lionel Martin, Leslie Dennis Goldingay, William Walter Bigoray, George Ryle and Frank Wells Shields. Their names should remain together in remembering that flight.

Guy and Judy had already lost their little son, Sauvan, in March 1942. Their daughter Tanya, born on 31 July 1943, was not yet nine months old when her father died. For Judy, this was another disappearance to endure, after the escapes which had brought him back before. Letters sent while he was missing preserve the painful interval between hope and confirmation. Afterwards she asked his friends to help her daughter know the father she had lost. Transquet’s letter was one answer to that appeal. In July 1945 Judy and Tanya went to Buckingham Palace to receive his decoration from the King.

Tanya spent many years trying to recover the father she had never had the chance to know. Her research survives in letters, photographs and the friendships it created. In 2022 she and her son Jamie visited Dürnbach War Cemetery. 

At Oakington, Guy’s command lasted little more than a month. His life was short, but its traces reach far beyond that posting: through the French households which sheltered him, the agents and airmen who flew with him, the friend he nursed in a Spanish camp, and the family who continued to search for him in other people’s memories. The surviving documents let us remember a skilled and determined pilot, a husband who longed for home, and a man who stopped to care for someone weaker than himself. That is the Guy his daughter was trying to find, and whose story her family is still bringing together.

Source pointers for the entry

The National Archives: AIR 27/2216/1–4 (692 Squadron); AIR 27/101/5–8 (7 Squadron, March–April 1944); Guy’s MI9 evasion report, S/P.G. 577. The French helpers are documented in the Fillerin/Péroy participant statements held by the Service historique de la Défense. The shaving episode comes from Louis Nouveau’s later memoir, Des capitaines par milliers; the boxing recollections include Jean-Pierre Nouveau’s account. Neither is used here to establish a medical diagnosis or a boxing championship. The Air Ministry correspondence is in AIR 40/2579 (4 May 1942).

Guy’s signed letter to Mrs Wilson, 1 April 1944 — IBCC Digital Archive. Guy’s letters to Judy (family originals, GL-LA–LE) and Hubert Transquet’s covering letter of 4 October 1944 and accompanying letter to Tanya support the personal passages. Transquet’s account is firsthand testimony written after Guy’s death; it does not establish that boxing proceeds funded his care. Family photographs support the portrait and Palace passages; the 2022 and 2026 interments are from my own experience.

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