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 Errol, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, opened in January 1943 as one of the newer wartime airfields built to expand capacity away from the most heavily attacked regions. Its location between Dundee and Perth gave it access to transport routes and open terrain suitable for a large concrete-runway station. While it never became a famous bomber base, Errol’s wartime work reveals the breadth of tasks required to keep the Allied air effort moving.
One of the most distinctive chapters in Errol’s history was its use for specialised ferry and training activity connected to Allied cooperation. The station housed No. 305 Ferry Training Unit, created to train Soviet crews receiving aircraft via British channels. This was an unusual arrangement: aircrew from an Allied nation trained in Britain on types that were being delivered for operational use. The presence of Soviet personnel at a Scottish airfield underlines how wartime logistics were not simply national systems but Allied networks, with aircraft, spares and training knowledge moving across political boundaries under intense pressure of time.
Errol was also part of the broader transport and support environment that grew as the war moved into its invasion phase. Airfields with good runways and open space could be used for packing, staging and movement tasks, including the handling of supplies intended for forces advancing on the continent. Even when not launching headline operations, a station like Errol functioned as capacity in reserve – able to absorb aircraft movements, host detachments, and provide runway and hangar space when other stations were full, damaged or weathered out.
Transport and ferry work shaped daily life. Instead of the rhythm of bomber ‘ops’, Errol’s tempo was often driven by schedules, paperwork, acceptance checks, and careful coordination between units. That created a different kind of discipline: ensuring aircraft were correctly serviced and documented, ensuring crews were briefed on routes and procedures, and ensuring the station could respond quickly to changing demands. Such work rarely makes dramatic headlines, but it is how wartime air power maintained momentum.
As with many wartime bases, Errol’s physical infrastructure was substantial: multiple runways, hangars and a technical site designed for heavy usage. The station remained active after the war in various roles, and its wartime foundations helped shape those later uses. For historians, Errol’s value is its illustration of the ‘support war’: the training, ferrying and logistical coordination that enabled frontline squadrons to be reinforced and Allied partners to be equipped.
In short, RAF Errol shows that the air war depended not only on combat units, but on stations that quietly connected production, training and delivery. It is a Scottish airfield whose wartime importance lies in cooperation and capacity – two qualities without which the operational story could not have been sustained.
Errol also demonstrates how quickly the RAF could build and operate major infrastructure in a rural setting. Concrete runways, extensive hangarage and a technical site appeared in a short time, and the station then acted as a flexible asset – supporting training, ferrying and transport tasks as priorities shifted.