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 East Fortune lies in East Lothian, just east of Edinburgh, and its landscape tells a long aviation story. By the Second World War it had already been an important earlier flying site, but wartime Britain needed it again. The Air Ministry requisitioned the area in June 1940 as a satellite of nearby Drem, and three hard runways were built to create a modern training station capable of supporting sustained flying in Scottish weather.
East Fortune’s key wartime identity was as an operational training airfield. In 1941 No. 60 Operational Training Unit moved in, specialising in preparing crews for night fighting. This was not basic ‘learning to fly’; it was the complex, high-risk step between elementary training and an operational squadron. Crews learned to take off, navigate and fight in darkness, to interpret directions from ground controllers, and to manage the workload of interception in an environment where a single mistake could be fatal.
The aircraft story mirrors the tactical story. Early on, the OTU used types such as Blenheims and the Boulton Paul Defiant, and East Fortune became closely associated with Defiant training. As the war evolved, the emphasis shifted. In November 1942 the station’s role transitioned into Coastal Command and anti-shipping training when No. 60 OTU was reorganised as No. 132 (Coastal) OTU. This change reflected the demands of the maritime war: crews needed to master low-level navigation over water, identification of ships, coordinated strike profiles, and the use of radar and radio discipline to find targets and return safely.
Beaufighters and Blenheims continued to feature, and from 1944 the de Havilland Mosquito arrived, bringing speed and performance that suited both strike and night roles. Training at East Fortune therefore sat right on the edge of operational practice: it produced crews for tasks ranging from night defence to maritime strike, and it did so using aircraft that were actively shaping the war’s later phases.
As the conflict wound down, flying activity decreased, but the station still supported movement and post-war tasks. After 1945 the airfield handled transport and ferry flights, including flights to and from Scandinavia, using types such as Stirlings, Halifaxes and Mosquitos. Fighter Command took over briefly in late 1946, but the station closed almost immediately, marking a rapid shift from wartime urgency to peacetime contraction.
Today East Fortune’s surviving hangars and runways are part of its continuing public legacy. The site demonstrates how training – often overlooked next to combat – was a decisive battlefield in its own right. East Fortune’s output was measured in crews competent enough to fight at night and over sea, and that competence was as strategically valuable as any single operation.
Training at East Fortune was also multinational. Crews from across the Commonwealth and from occupied Europe passed through, bringing accents and experience that enriched the station while reminding everyone that the war in the air was a shared Allied effort.