Full WW2 control tower details and photos for this wartime airfield are coming soon. Please check back later as this is work progress. If you would like to contribute information or photos please get in touch.
RAF Bramcote, near Nuneaton in Warwickshire, is a remarkable example of how an airfield’s importance is not always measured by long combat tours from its runways. Built in the late 1930s and opening just before the war’s first winter, Bramcote became a critical centre for training and the development of Allied air power – especially the Polish contribution to the RAF – before later changing hands and identity in the post-war era.
The station’s first wartime unit was No. 215 Squadron, arriving in September 1939 with Vickers Wellingtons and Avro Ansons, but Bramcote’s defining role began in June 1940 when No. 18 (Polish) Operational Training Unit moved in. At a moment when Poland had been overrun and Polish airmen were regrouping in exile, the RAF and the Polish government-in-exile agreed on a dedicated training pipeline to build operational bomber squadrons. Bramcote therefore became a place where experienced but displaced aircrew, new trainees, and ground staff could be assembled, trained, standardised and then posted to the front line as effective RAF units rather than as scattered individuals.
The scale of that contribution is visible in the station’s unit history. During the summer of 1940, Polish bomber squadrons were formed at Bramcote: No. 300 Squadron formed on 1 July 1940, and No. 301 Squadron formed later that month, initially using Fairey Battles before moving to more suitable types and transferring to other stations for operational work. In August 1940, No. 304 and No. 305 Polish Bomber Squadrons also formed at Bramcote, again beginning with Battles and converting to Wellingtons as the bomber war expanded. These formations were not merely administrative: they required training programmes, aircraft availability, instructors, navigation and bombing practice, gunnery preparation, and the ground-crew expertise to maintain aircraft safely. In short, Bramcote helped turn exile into operational capability.
Operational training continued as the station’s central theme. The Wellington – twin-engined, long-ranged and robust – was the aircraft most associated with Bramcote’s OTU work, and the airfield used satellites to spread activity and manage traffic. As the war progressed the station also hosted other RAF elements, including units connected with approach training and station services. A notable wartime visitor was No. 151 Squadron, which arrived briefly in late 1940 with Hurricanes, a reminder that even training-centred airfields could be pulled into the wider defensive picture during periods of intense threat.
Bramcote’s physical character also reflected wartime priorities: rather than permanent concrete surfaces, the runways were laid with Sommerfeld tracking, a form of metal matting that could be installed comparatively quickly and repaired or extended as needed. That choice underlines the station’s early-war urgency and the need to get training output flowing fast.
After the Second World War Bramcote’s identity shifted dramatically. It passed to the Admiralty, becoming Royal Naval Air Station Bramcote and commissioning as HMS Gamecock, before later becoming an army barracks. Yet its WWII legacy remains distinct and meaningful: Bramcote was a key forging ground for the Polish bomber force in RAF service, a place where squadrons were formed, crews were trained, and an allied nation’s air effort was rebuilt and sent back into the fight.