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 Bicester in Oxfordshire was an early, pre-war expansion airfield whose Second World War role was less about launching headline raids and more about the invisible work that made air power possible. Opened before the conflict, the station became a centre for specialist activity that included training, communications flying and, importantly, deception and camouflage work at a time when the RAF was learning how to survive under air attack.
One of Bicester’s best-known wartime associations is with the RAF’s camouflage and concealment effort. Aircraft and facilities were experimented with and adapted to reduce visibility from the air, using paint schemes, netting, dummy installations and careful siting. In the early months of the war this kind of work was not a luxury – it was a practical response to the reality that airfields were obvious targets. Bicester’s involvement in camouflage reflects the way the RAF tried to make its bases harder to find and harder to hit.
The station also supported a variety of flying units and specialist flights. Communications and calibration activity was important across the wartime RAF: aircraft were needed to check radio aids, verify approaches, and test the equipment that allowed night flying and bad-weather operations. Ferry training and liaison flights also passed through stations like Bicester, moving aircraft and personnel as the wartime machine shifted resources between commands and theatres.
As the war progressed, logistics became even more dominant. Bicester hosted stores and maintenance organisations, including air stores activity, reflecting the enormous demand for spares, tools, radio sets, engines and ground equipment. Large depots and stores parks did not have the glamour of a bomber station, but they were essential: without parts, aircraft become static; without trained fitters and organised supply, sortie rates collapse. Bicester’s infrastructure and road/rail links made it a sensible place for this kind of support role.
By late 1944 Bicester transitioned toward non-flying maintenance and depot functions, a pattern seen at many airfields as operational flying consolidated elsewhere. The station’s wartime legacy therefore lies in its breadth rather than a single headline unit: it was an adaptable Oxfordshire base that helped the RAF learn how to hide, how to navigate and communicate more reliably, and how to keep the expanding air force supplied and functioning across years of global war.
Camouflage and deception work ranged from simple netting to full-scale dummy airfields, and stations involved in the work contributed to a broader defensive strategy designed to confuse enemy reconnaissance.
Support units at places like Bicester helped keep radio navigation aids functioning, which was especially important as night operations increased and aircraft depended more on reliable approach systems.
Bicester’s wartime contribution is best understood as part of the system that kept other stations effective: fewer dramatic headlines, but steady output in training, supply and technical support.
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.