Meeting Report of the Ipswich and District Historical Transport Society on October 28th 2026.

A total of 57 members and visitors attended our October meeting.

The subject of the talk at this meeting was: Sculthorpe Air Base 1951 - Secrets of a Special Operation! – Speaker: Mr Ian Brown.

Sculthorpe Air Base is situated north of Norwich near Fakenham. The footprint of the base looks much the same as it did in 1951.

In the late forties our relationship with the Soviet Union was as tense then as it is with Russia now. The former kept all its military secrets well hidden behind the Iron Curtain. Britain was particularly keen to unearth Soviet secrets because the Labour Government had sold a Rolls Royce Nene engine to the USSR in 1946 in the hope of further trade with them. In fact, the Soviets reverse engineered the engine and developed it for use in the MiG 15, one of the most successful and widely used military aircraft in history. Even Stalin had said at the time: “What fool would sell us his secrets?” – that “fool” was Sir Stafford Cripps, then President of the Board of Trade. We were aware they had copied the design because later, a British engineer examined a MiG 15 engine and declared: “They even copied our mistakes.”

US President; Harry S Truman vetoed any idea involving reconnaissance flights over Soviet territory. The Attlee government, however, were keen for an aerial spy operation to be mounted. This was very optimistic, since we were ill-equipped to do the job after a long hard Second World War.

In the end it was decided that Bomber Command would work with the Americans. The former would supply the crews whilst the latter would supply the aircraft, in this case; the RB45C built by North American Aviation. It was later named the Tornado. This jet aircraft was developed in 1947 specifically for reconnaissance and was devoid of bomb bays.

The operation, known as Jiu-Jitsu, was to be based at Sculthorpe Air Base. Potential crew members went over for training in America. It is interesting that one of the candidates chosen to lead the operation was Australian Mickey Martin, one of the famous Dambusters. Unfortunately, Martin failed a pressurisation test and the entire project was handed over to Squadron Leader John Crampton instead.

In July 1951 four aircraft were leased to Britain from the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing to form 'Special Duties Flight, Sculthorpe', commanded by Crampton. The planes were stripped of USAF markings, including serial numbers, and then RAF roundels were applied.

The aircraft were tasked with flying deep-level reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union to gather electronic and photographic intelligence. Refuelling in mid-air was required at several points in the mission and B29 aircraft were used for this purpose. Many photographs were taken and shared between the allies. It is thought that the aircraft were spotted by the Soviets but, in this case, they did nothing.

Jiu-Jitsu 2 was planned in order to find strategic offensive targets in Russia but the operation was cancelled eleven hours before take-off.

Crampton did lead a mission in April 1954 to take photographs in the Moscow area. He flew via Kazakhstan and later on he described orange flashes of flak around the aircraft. MiG 15 aircraft were launched in order to ram the allied aircraft. Crampton made it back to Germany safely, however, his aircraft had sustained some flak damage.

There was another mission in 1955 over the Baltic states but Ian has had great difficulty getting any information about this particular operation. Some information will be available in four years – Ian will be waiting.

Royal Air Force Sculthorpe was officially closed on 2nd October 1992. However, the airfield itself, together with the dispersed secure weapon storage area, was retained by the Ministry of Defence, and continues to be used by the USAF 352nd Special Operations Wing based at RAF Mildenhall. They carry out training involving low flying airdrops and rescue and recovery missions.

Sculthorpe Heritage Centre opened in an old chapel building and has been growing over the last four years. In the collection are the George Medals presented to two American servicemen (Freeman Kilpatrick and Reis Leming) who saved many lives in the area during the disastrous 1953 floods.

The centre was visited by Her Majesty the Queen in 2022, the last year of her life. Ian escorted her as founder and curator of the centre. She was due to spend 25 minutes there, but in the end, stayed for an hour.

At the end of the meeting; Ian received thanks from our Chairman and warm applause from the floor for an interesting talk from a very enthusiastic speaker.

Mervyn Russen