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 Sibson, near Peterborough, developed into a flying training and support station whose wartime importance lay in building skills rather than launching headline-grabbing combat operations. The airfield’s location in the East Midlands/ eastern England training belt placed it within easy reach of major routes while remaining far enough inland to be relatively secure from attack. Like many training stations, Sibson’s story is best understood as part of the RAF’s wider pipeline: taking men with basic flying ability and turning them into competent pilots ready for operational aircraft.
The station hosted a range of training and instructional units. Among them was No. 2 Central Flying School, associated with standardising flying instruction and improving techniques. Sibson also saw activity from No. 7 (Pilots) Advanced Flying Unit and No. 7 Service Flying Training School – units that focused on taking pupils beyond the elementary stage into more demanding flying: instrument work, formation procedures, navigation, night flying and cross-country handling. Elementary Flying Training Schools such as No. 13 EFTS and No. 25 (Polish) EFTS also used Sibson, the latter reflecting the vital contribution of Allied and exiled personnel training in Britain. EFTS training typically relied on forgiving aircraft like the de Havilland Tiger Moth, progressing to more advanced types as pupils developed.
Training stations were busy and noisy places, with frequent short sorties and ‘circuits and bumps’ as students learned take-offs and landings. Instructors monitored progress and corrected habits, while ground crews kept the aircraft turning around quickly to meet training schedules. The hazards were real: inexperienced pilots, unpredictable weather and mechanical faults meant that accidents were an ever-present risk at stations like Sibson, even though the flying was ‘training’ rather than combat.
Sibson also had a defensive dimension. Units of the RAF Regiment, including No. 2859 Squadron and a dedicated anti-aircraft flight, were responsible for protecting the airfield against air attack, sabotage and other threats. This was a reminder that even training bases were valuable targets: aircraft, fuel, ammunition and skilled personnel were all strategic assets.
As the war ended and training demand reduced, Sibson’s importance declined, but the airfield’s imprint remained in the local landscape. Today the site’s story offers a clear view into how the RAF won not only through famous squadrons and daring raids, but through the patient, relentless work of training – where thousands of sorties built the competence and confidence that aircrew needed to survive on operations.
For researchers and visitors, RAF Sibson 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.
Because Sibson’s role was instructional, the station’s ‘key events’ were often personal rather than headline operations: first solos, qualification checks, night flying exercises and the graduation of course intakes who then moved to operational units. Each successful course meant more trained pilots and aircrew available for squadrons at the front – an impact that is easy to overlook, but fundamental to sustaining RAF operations through the long years of war.