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 Little Rissington, in Gloucestershire near the Cotswolds, played a wartime role that was primarily about training and aviation support rather than front-line combat. Opened on the eve of war and developed quickly, it became part of the RAF’s essential training machine: the pipeline that turned raw recruits into competent pilots and aircrew, and then produced a steady flow of airmen ready to convert onto operational types.
During the Second World War the station hosted major training and specialist units. A key resident was No. 6 Service Flying Training School, later redesignated as No. 6 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit. The purpose of an SFTS/AFU was straightforward but demanding: take pilots beyond elementary handling and teach the accuracy, confidence and judgement required before they progressed to operational training units. Training sorties were repetitive by design – circuits and landings, navigation exercises, formation work and emergency drills – because confidence was created through habit. Small errors that could be shrugged off in peacetime became lethal in wartime flying; this is why the discipline learned at stations like Little Rissington mattered.
Little Rissington also supported the technical side of safe landing and navigation with blind/beam approach training. Units such as No. 23 Blind Approach Training Flight (later 1523 Beam Approach Training Flight) highlight a critical wartime problem: aircraft had to land safely in poor visibility and darkness, often after long missions, with tired crews and damaged machines. Teaching crews to trust instruments and to fly accurate approaches reduced losses that had nothing to do with enemy action. In parallel, storage and maintenance functions – such as No. 8 Aircraft Storage Unit (later No. 8 Maintenance Unit) – reflect how the RAF managed aircraft as a national inventory, moving, holding and processing machines to match operational need.
Because the station’s work was training-heavy, it was also people-heavy. Instructors, trainees, engineering trades, operations clerks, drivers and WAAF personnel kept the place running. The airfield environment was busy, sometimes hazardous: training accidents were an unavoidable part of wartime flying, and a major objective was always to reduce them through procedures, checks and standardised routines. Each safe graduation represented time saved and lives preserved later on operations.
- Key wartime units included No. 6 Service Flying Training School / No. 6 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit and No. 1523 Beam Approach Training Flight.
- Support units included No. 8 Aircraft Storage Unit / No. 8 Maintenance Unit.
- Why it mattered: improved pilot skill and instrument-landing competence, reducing avoidable losses and maintaining the flow of trained crews to operational units.
Little Rissington’s later post-war fame can obscure its wartime contribution, but its WW2 identity is clear: a disciplined training and support station where the RAF’s operational strength was built long before aircraft reached the front line.
Training stations also shaped RAF culture. They taught standard phraseology, checklist discipline and the expectation that procedures mattered. Those habits were not minor; they reduced accident rates and created crews who could operate reliably under pressure. In the long war, that procedural culture was one of the RAF’s most valuable ‘products’.