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 Scampton, north of Lincoln, is one of the most historically significant bomber stations of the Second World War. Re-opened in the mid-1930s as part of the RAF’s expansion programme, it entered the war as a No. 5 Group Bomber Command station with twin-engined Handley Page Hampdens. In the opening hours of 3 September 1939, Scampton launched one of the RAF’s first offensive sorties of the war: Hampdens from Nos. 83 and 49 Squadrons flew an armed reconnaissance off Wilhelmshaven, a mission remembered for its symbolism as much as its operational outcome.
Through 1939-42, Scampton’s squadrons carried out early Bomber Command tasks including hazardous low-level minelaying – ‘Gardening’ – along enemy shipping lanes and port approaches. The station also witnessed the transition to heavier aircraft. For a short period, Scampton hosted the Avro Manchester, but the type’s difficulties meant that the squadrons soon converted to the Avro Lancaster, which would define the station’s wartime identity. Nos. 49 and 83 Squadrons became Lancaster units, and Scampton’s crews took part in the escalating campaign against German industry, transport and naval targets.
Scampton’s most famous chapter began in 1943 with the formation of No. 617 Squadron. Created under great secrecy at the station, 617 was tasked with Operation Chastise – the attack on the Ruhr dams using Barnes Wallis’s ‘bouncing bomb’. On the night of 16-17 May 1943, nineteen Lancasters departed Scampton under Wing Commander Guy Gibson. The raid breached the M√∂hne and Eder dams and became an iconic story of innovation, low-level flying skill and heavy loss. The squadron’s work did not end there; it became a specialist precision unit, later employing advanced munitions and tactics against hardened targets.
Scampton remained a busy Lancaster base later in the war, hosting additional squadrons and supporting the continuing bomber offensive. The airfield’s infrastructure – its hangars, dispersals, technical areas and control facilities – was built to sustain the relentless cycle of preparation, briefing, take-off, recovery and repair that characterised Bomber Command life. It was also a place of constant human drama: the camaraderie of crews, the pressure of operations, and the absence of those who failed to return.
In the post-war years Scampton continued as a major RAF station, later famous for the Vulcan and the Red Arrows, but its Second World War legacy remains central. Few places encapsulate the evolution of Bomber Command from early war improvisation to late war specialisation as clearly as Scampton, and the surrounding landscape still carries the memory of thousands of bomber sorties that began and ended on those Lincolnshire runways.
For researchers and visitors, RAF Scampton can often be understood through the surviving pattern of its runways, perimeter track and dispersal points. Even where buildings have vanished, aerial photographs and ground traces can reveal the technical site, the former station entrance, and the ‘domestic’ camps where personnel lived. These physical clues help connect the local landscape to the wider wartime system of aircrew generation, logistics and operations.