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 Silverstone, straddling the Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire border, was built during the Second World War and opened in 1943 as a Bomber Command training station. Its layout followed the standard wartime pattern for bomber airfields: three hard runways arranged in a triangle, perimeter track, dispersed hardstandings and a compact technical site. Although the airfield is now world-famous for motor racing, its wartime purpose was straightforward and vital – training aircrews for the bomber war.
The station’s principal wartime resident was No. 17 Operational Training Unit. OTUs formed the bridge between basic flying training and front-line operations. At Silverstone, 17 OTU operated Vickers Wellington bombers, a type widely used for training because it combined real multi-engine systems and crew positions with forgiving handling characteristics. Crews learned to function as a unit: pilots practised multi-engine procedures and night circuits, navigators refined dead-reckoning and radio fixes, bomb aimers trained on bombing ranges, and gunners rehearsed turret drills and air-to-air firing procedures. They also learned the disciplined routine of bomber operations – briefing, take-off checks, formation procedures, and emergency handling in poor weather.
Training stations like Silverstone were busy, often flying multiple ‘waves’ each day. With hundreds of aircraft movements, the control tower and ground controllers had to sequence traffic safely, while maintenance crews kept aircraft serviceable despite the wear of constant circuits, cross-country flights and practice sorties. The Wellington’s radial engines, undercarriage and systems required regular attention, and the pace of wartime instruction meant the ground crew’s working day often stretched long after the last aircraft had landed.
Although not a combat base, Silverstone shared the dangers of wartime flying. Training accidents could be severe, particularly in bad weather, at night, or when inexperienced crews faced mechanical failures. Such incidents were an unfortunate consequence of the need to train quickly and at scale, and they formed part of the broader sacrifice behind Britain’s air offensive.
After the war the airfield was repurposed and became the home of what is now the Silverstone Circuit. The wartime triangle of runways still shapes the landscape, and the naming of features such as ‘Wellington Straight’ is a quiet nod to the station’s RAF past. Beneath the roar of modern engines lies the footprint of a bomber training base that helped prepare aircrew for the most demanding flying of their lives.
Because Silverstone sat within reach of other Bomber Command and training stations, its crews also interacted with a wider training ecosystem: bombing and gunnery ranges, navigation beacons, beam-approach aids and cross-country routes that linked multiple airfields. Crews would fly exercises that mirrored operational patterns – climb to height, assemble in formation, navigate to a turning point, practise a ‘bomb run’, then recover using radio procedures – so that the routines became instinctive before the first real mission. Even on training flights, crews learned the discipline of blackout conditions, strict radio silence at times, and the pressures of returning with an engine running rough or a system malfunctioning.
Many of the men who passed through 17 OTU went on to Lancasters and Halifaxes in operational squadrons, carrying with them the habits and teamwork forged at Silverstone. In that sense, the airfield’s contribution is invisible but profound: it was one of the places where Bomber Command’s ‘crew system’ was built in practice, turning individual airmen into a coordinated seven-man unit able to survive long nights over enemy territory. When visitors walk the modern circuit, they are crossing ground once used for briefing, engine tests and night landings – quiet routines that underpinned the RAF’s ability to keep the bomber offensive going.