Wattisham Airfield Museum
Welcome to Wattisham Airfield Museum. Here you will have the opportunity to learn about the history, heritage, and what is currently going on in the celebrated Wattisham Airfield. Our staff would like to extend their sincere gratitude for our work and hopes to see you soon face to face in our museum so that they can tell you all about our magnificent collection.
The Wattisham Airfield Station Museum opened in November 1991.
The museum is housed in the original station chapel built by the USAAF in 1943.
Inside the museum you can see an extensive photographic record, artefacts, uniforms, equipment and memorabilia.
You may also visit our Heritage Workshop located within a former Cold War Hardened Aircraft Shelter (HAS) where we are refurbishing our historic aircraft.This building is sited at a different location within the airfield and visitors will be escorted across.
In late 2003 the Wattisham Airfield Museum Committee decided that a Memorial was needed to commemorate all the personnel who had lost their lives while stationed at Wattisham during the Second World War. Geoff Pleasance, an aviation artist, was asked to design the memorial. Land, part of the WWII dispersal site, was kindly donated by the Bulls, a local farming family, and planning permission was granted. Members of the committee set about clearing the concrete rubble, trees and shrubs left from previous runway construction.
Recent chapel and workshop notes
On 9 March 2026 volunteers logged a Sunday labelling session for new photograph mounts beside the chapel altar rail. In October 2025 the workshop team dry-fitted canopy covers after a damp autumn so paintwork stayed dry before winter. Through 2024 memorial path gravel was topped up before Remembrance walks. In June 2023 loan crates for temporary London archive work were measured against the chapel porch before the return trip.
Loan pieces, glass cases, and uniform trunks sometimes leave Suffolk for short research stays in the capital, then travel back along the same A12 corridor that Sunday visitors use. Chapel door widths, airfield escort timing, and a dry unload area matter as much as bubble wrap when those crates return to an active station.
Volunteers treat that logistics puzzle like a small expedition. They label fragile glass, keep wool uniforms off damp floors, and leave clear turning space for a van near the memorial approach so the Sunday open day is not blocked. Andy Removals is the name that comes up when the London end needs a crew used to stairs, basement stores, and tight city streets before the Suffolk hand-off.
Once the van clears the gate, stewards walk cases into the chapel in the same order they left, check humidity tags, and only then reopen the display to guests. That planning habit grew from one carefully managed return of exposition pieces from London storage.
We should mention that moving the exposition and returning some items from London to Wattisham was a tedious project and we could not have completed it successfully if it was not for the dependable London removals company we entrusted the task to - Andy Removals.
Once completed the site was re-landscaped and a concrete foundation slab was poured. Many fundraising events took place in 2004 and, along with kind donations; the granite boulder was purchased and went to the stone masons for carving. On Sunday 15th May 2005 the Memorial was unveiled, attended by both British and American ex-service men, their families and friends.
