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 Balado Bridge sat in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, and was one of the many ‘satellite’ airfields built to expand capacity and reduce risk to main bases. In wartime terms, Balado’s value was flexibility: it could take aircraft overflow, support training, and provide a dispersal option when weather or operational demands made that necessary.
The airfield is closely linked with the training and evaluation of fighter tactics. It operated as a satellite to RAF Grangemouth and was associated with Spitfire training through Operational Training Unit activity, giving pilots and ground crews the space to practise the demanding routines of fighter operations without congesting the parent station. In October 1943 it became home to No. 2 Tactical Evaluation Unit (later described in some records as a Tactical Exercise Unit), a role that placed it at the heart of refining methods and assessing performance as the RAF prepared for the intensifying air war and the eventual return to the Continent.
These units were about more than simply ‘learning to fly’ an aircraft. Tactical evaluation involved gunnery exercises, formation discipline, interception practice, navigation and low-level work, as well as the careful recording of results so that training could be improved. This mattered particularly for pilots from Allied nations serving within the RAF system, including Polish airmen, who often trained within the same organisational structure and benefited from standardised methods while bringing their own combat experience to the table.
Balado’s timeline reflects the shifting priorities of 1944. Once major training responsibilities were reorganised, the airfield’s use changed again, including periods when it served as a relief landing ground for other training establishments. Later in 1944 the War Department took over control, illustrating how quickly wartime infrastructure could be repurposed as the focus moved from building air power to sustaining a vast, mobile invasion force with transport, supply and logistics needs.
Although Balado Bridge is remembered by many for post-war events held on the site, its wartime story is a classic example of how ‘secondary’ stations supported the front line. The effectiveness of RAF fighter and tactical flying depended on a chain of training fields like Balado where pilots were polished, tactics were tested, and routines were made repeatable long before the aircraft met the enemy.
Satellite stations typically had lighter permanent infrastructure than their parent bases, but they were expected to be operational at short notice, with fuel, ammunition handling procedures and servicing routines ready to scale up quickly.
In Scotland’s changeable weather, airfields like Balado also provided a vital safety net for diversions, preventing training accidents and preserving scarce aircraft and crews.
The airfield’s wartime map-and-plan legacy is a valuable research resource, showing how temporary buildings, blister hangars and perimeter tracks were arranged for wartime efficiency.
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.