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 Barford St John, near Bloxham in Oxfordshire, began as a wartime training field and evolved into a Bomber Command satellite with an unusually ‘experimental’ edge. Opened on 30 July 1941, it was initially a relief landing ground and training facility supporting nearby schools, with Airspeed Oxfords among the aircraft commonly seen in its early phase. Like many grass airfields, its first purpose was practical: provide space, reduce congestion, and keep training flowing as the RAF expanded at speed.
By late 1942 the station had been upgraded with hard runways and night flying equipment, reopening as a satellite to RAF Upper Heyford and bringing it into the Bomber Command orbit. It then supported Operational Training Unit activity, notably with Vickers Wellingtons, helping crews to transition from elementary skills to the more demanding routines required for operations. OTU work meant navigation exercises, cross-country flying, night circuits, bombing practice and the disciplined teamwork that bomber crews needed if they were to survive the step into combat.
Barford St John is notable for a strand of jet-age development that ran alongside wartime training. In 1943 it served as a test and development location linked with early British jet aircraft, including the Gloster E.28/39 and later the Gloster Meteor. The juxtaposition is striking: an airfield supporting Wellington training while also touching the future of aviation. It underlines how wartime Britain had to fight in the present while simultaneously building the technology that would define post-war air power.
Other specialist activity followed. Later in the war, units such as Mosquito training formations used the station to prepare crews for the high-speed, precision roles associated with Pathfinder and specialist bomber operations. The Mosquito’s performance demanded disciplined flying and strong navigation, and airfields like Barford St John provided the infrastructure – runways, lighting, radio aids, servicing – needed to train crews safely at the required tempo.
Flying ceased after the war and Barford St John entered a new phase as a communications and support site, eventually becoming a US-operated communications centre linked with RAF Croughton. Even so, its Second World War identity remains rooted in training, Bomber Command support and the remarkable fact that, on the same Oxfordshire airfield, Wellington crews learned their trade while Britain’s earliest jets were tested in the shadow of a still-raging war.
Satellite bomber fields were often equipped with night-flying aids and hard runways because OTU activity demanded frequent circuits and landings in poor weather, when accident rates could otherwise climb sharply.
The airfield’s post-war shift into communications use reflects a broader pattern: wartime flying sites often became Cold War signal and support hubs, using their secure perimeters and established infrastructure.
For researchers, Barford St John is an example of how a single station can sit at the intersection of training history, Bomber Command support and early jet development.
For visitors and researchers today, the most rewarding approach is to combine surviving site evidence (perimeter tracks, dispersal loops, building footprints) with squadron ORBs, logbooks and local testimony, which together recreate how the station worked day to day.