Audlem and USAAF

The decision announced this week that the USAAF will be pulling out of its UK bases at Mildenhall in Suffolk and RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth in Cambridgeshire brought back memories of the time Audlem was in contact with the Americans.

Back in 2004, a member of the Audlem Transport Festival team, thought it would be a fantastic attraction for that year's Audlem Festival of Transport if a USAAF F16 jet could fly over the village on the day of the Festival.

There was an encouraging response, we are told, but due to a slight miscommunication, we later heard that the American airforce official dealing with the request thought there was an Audlem in the United States.

The Transport Festival team member often wonders if a quiet USA community called Audlem – or with a similar name as no such place with the exact same spelling has yet been found – enjoyed a magnificent but totally unexpected flypast by the USAAF in late July 2004.

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