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.
Overview
RAF Desborough was a wartime airfield in Northamptonshire created to serve the RAF’s vast training machine. Unlike famous front-line fighter and bomber bases, Desborough’s importance lay in the steady, relentless production of trained aircrew – pilots and specialists who would feed the operational squadrons of Bomber Command, Coastal Command and the wider RAF.
A training airfield in the wartime pipeline
As the air war expanded, the RAF relied on a layered system of schools and units: elementary and service flying training schools produced pilots; advanced schools and operational training units (OTUs) then prepared crews for the realities of operational flying. Desborough’s facilities – runways, dispersals, hangars, technical areas and accommodation – were designed to keep aircraft flying intensively through all weathers, with instructors turning raw trainees into competent operational aircrew.
Training at stations like Desborough was varied and demanding. Daylight circuits and landings were the visible routine, but much of the work was about building safe habits under pressure: instrument flying, radio procedures, navigation exercises, cross-country sorties, night flying and formation practice. Aircrew learned the discipline of checklists and crew coordination, the rhythm of briefings and debriefings, and the need to fly accurately to time, height and course – skills that mattered as much over the North Sea or Germany as they did over the Midlands.
Aircraft and roles
Desborough hosted the kinds of aircraft typically associated with training and support. Multi-engine trainers and operational types used for ‘work-up’ sorties allowed crews to practise navigation, bombing routines and gunnery drills. Target towing and armament practice were also part of the wider training ecosystem, providing live-fire experience for air gunners and giving crews a feel for aircraft handling with stores and equipment aboard. The airfield’s airspace would often be busy with overlapping circuits, radio calls and training formations, creating a controlled environment that still demanded high standards of airmanship.
Risk at home
Although not usually under direct attack, training stations were hazardous. Wartime flying hours were enormous, aircraft were worked hard, and many trainees arrived with limited experience. Accidents – often in poor weather or at night – were an accepted, tragic reality of the training pipeline. The losses at stations like Desborough underline an important truth of the Second World War air effort: many airmen were killed long before they reached an operational squadron.
Legacy
After 1945, the RAF’s training needs changed rapidly, and many wartime satellite and training airfields were reduced, repurposed or closed. Desborough’s buildings and runways were gradually dismantled or absorbed back into farmland. What remains today is largely a landscape story – alignments in fields, traces of hardstanding, and local memory. For visitors, the significance of RAF Desborough is the reminder that victory depended not only on famous battles and celebrated squadrons, but also on thousands of hours of training conducted at stations like this, where competence, discipline and survival were forged.