The main focus of this website is upon Bomber Command, the Path Finder Force, and 97 Squadron, which belonged to the Path Finder Force for one year, from April 1943 to April 1944. During this period the squadron was stationed at Bourn in Cambridgeshire.
The Path Finder Force (PFF) was colloquially known as the Pathfinders but officially it was 8 Group. A target-marking force, it was one of the most important Groups in RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War.
The leader of the PFF was a brilliant Australian airman, Air Commodore Donald Bennett, who can be seen in two of the photographs below. From June 1943, the Pathfinder HQ was in Castle Hill House in Huntingdon, within easy reach of all the Pathfinder airfields.
Airfield possibly Bourn
1943, with the signatures of the crew
Prince George, Duke of Kent, is third from the left; this photograph must have been taken shortly before his death in an RAF aircrash in August 1942
