Tracing the footsteps of Kings Cliffe US WWII pilot killed in action nearly 80 years ago

In February 1945 a 23-year-old pilot already 4,000 miles from home, on the cusp of his adult life, climbed into his cockpit and rolled off down a Kings Cliffe runway.

Fighter pilot Sidney Stitzer was part of a mission to disrupt the German railway network.

But he never returned.

His plane was hit by metal from an exploding train car and he died.

This weekend, his nephew Bill Emanuel travelled from Denver, Colorado, to that overgrown Northamptonshire airfield to stand in the very spot in which his Uncle Sid hopped into his plane for the final time all those years ago.

The Northants Telegraph was there to witness Bill’s pilgrimage and to walk in the footsteps of those brave US Air Force men who are to be commemorated in new museum that will open this summer thanks to a group of dedicated volunteers.

‘The buildings had a lifespan of about ten years’

Back in the 1940s, Kings Cliffe was a bustling airfield, used firstly by Royal Air Force spitfires, and then handed over the US Air Force for the latter part of the war. It’s where Glenn Miller played his final ever hangar concert for war-weary troops before his plane went missing over the English Channel.

There’s a new holiday park on the site now, with a memorial stone on the old concrete base of the hangar where Miller’s music rang out.

The owners of the park have now handed over a small unit to local historians who are turning it into the Kings Cliffe Airfield Museum to help commemorate the site’s history as well as all the men who lived there during WWII.

On Saturday (April 27) they welcomed Bill Emanuel and his wife Cheryl who had travelled to see the place where Uncle Sid spent his final days.

Transported in a contemporary USAF truck and jeep driven by local volunteers, they were taken around the airfield to see remnants of a long-gone past.

The buildings were only ever supposed to last around 10 years. But many concrete and brick relics still remain on the farmland that was a key part of the war effort.

Mike Murray, a history teacher at Lodge Park Academy in Corby, who helps run the Kings Cliffe project in his spare time, explained some of the fascinating history of the airfield

"Many of the buildings were only temporary and had a lifespan of about ten years. Some of them were built in single-skin brick. But lots are still standing which is fairly remarkable.

"Most of the runways were broken up and use for hardcore for the A14 and A47.”

Still on the site, which is just off Wansford Road, are small shelters, mushroom pillboxes and defence buildings. The two-storey control tower is also still standing. During the war, controllers would have been able to see through its large windows for miles around. Blackout curtains pulled around behind them would have protected the lights and sounds of their equipment from enemy view.

‘He went to volunteer for active duty’

Sidney Stitzer arrived in Kings Cliffe in November 1944. He’d previously been a college student and had to decide whether to be part of the army or the USAF.

“He weighed up his options,” said Bill, “and decided he’d have a better chance of survival in the air force.

"He was able to pass the tests and he went off to flight school and was then given the choice of staying in the US to be a flight instructor or to go an be in an active squadron. He thought that being a flight instructor was far more dangerous with someone who was learning to fly, so he went to volunteer for active duty.”

He became part of the 20th Fighter Group, which was known as the ‘Loco Group’ because of its string of successful attacks on locomotives. But Sidney was not so lucky.

Just three months after his arrival in the UK, in February 1945, he was with his squadron escorting bombers out of Nuremberg.

Once the last of the bombers was clear, Sid’s fighter groups began a patrol. He found a railroad train and opened fire. But the freight car he was shooting at blew up and Sid’s plane was struck by some of the debris from the train.

His plane fell out of the air to the ground and he died.

"The locals buried him in an unmarked grave,” said Bill.

Then after, the war a cousin who worked in Eisenhower’s office got his personal permission to go and find Sid.

"The locals were very helpful and he managed to find the crash site and then found where Sid was buried,” said Bill. “He was brought home and buried Fennimore, Wisconsin.”

Bill, a former radio news presenter, began to research his Uncle Sid later in life. His family didn’t often talk about how their son had died. It was too painful.

He eventually decided to make the journey over to the UK. In an emotional moment on Saturday, he stood among the concrete rubble and the nettles in the spot where Sid began his final journey.

Crashed plane

The Kings Cliffe Airfield museum is due to open this summer.

There are already a range of artefacts ready to be displayed. One is the carburettor from a plane that overheated after trying to get off the boggy Kings Cliffe airfield. It crashed into Fineshade Woods a mile off the end of the runway, killing three of the nine men on board. The heavy hunk of metal, still bearing the number of the aircraft to which it belonged, was later found by metal detectorists and it will go on display at the museum when it opens.

You can find out more about the Kings Cliffe Airfield Museum on their Facebook page here.