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 Church Lawford, just south-west of Rugby in Warwickshire, was built for training rather than combat, and its wartime significance lies in a highly practical problem: how to get aircraft safely onto the ground when weather, darkness and fatigue made landing the most dangerous phase of any flight. Opened in April 1941 with a robust set of concrete runways, it sat within RAF Flying Training Command and became a specialist base for instructor training and instrument approach work.
The station’s early wartime users included the Central Flying School, operating Airspeed Oxfords and Avro Tutors. The Oxford was a key multi-engine trainer, used to teach navigation, radio procedures, bombing practice and the teamwork required in a cockpit with multiple crew positions. By training instructors as well as students, Church Lawford helped amplify RAF output: every competent instructor produced here could go on to train dozens more pilots and crew elsewhere, multiplying the station’s impact far beyond its own perimeter track.
From June 1942 the airfield became strongly associated with beam approach training. Beam approach was an early radio guidance system that allowed pilots to fly a structured, instrument-based descent and line-up for landing in low cloud or poor visibility. The RAF created dedicated Beam Approach Training Flights to standardise techniques and reduce loss rates, particularly for night and winter operations. At Church Lawford, training flights used Oxfords to teach disciplined instrument procedures, decision-making at minima, and the coordination between pilot and navigation or radio staff that made guided approaches possible. These skills were essential not only for training units but also for operational squadrons returning from long missions with damaged aircraft or exhausted crews.
Another notable wartime occupant was No. 18 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit, which used Oxfords and, unusually, Boulton Paul Defiants. The Defiant, a turret fighter whose front-line role proved limited, found second life in training and target-related duties. Its presence at Church Lawford reflects the wartime habit of finding productive roles for aircraft types no longer suited to combat, keeping scarce resources useful in the training system.
- Primary wartime role: flying training, instructor development and instrument/beam approach training.
- Key training units: Central Flying School and Advanced Flying Units; Beam Approach Training Flights operating from mid-1942 to 1945.
- Typical aircraft: Airspeed Oxford, Avro Tutor, and Boulton Paul Defiant.
Church Lawford continued as a training and support site after the war, later accommodating construction and engineering functions. Its Second World War story is a reminder that air power depended not only on heroic combat, but on thousands of carefully taught procedures. Every safe, repeatable instrument landing technique learned at places like Church Lawford helped keep crews alive and aircraft serviceable for the next sortie.