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.
Known today as Coventry Airport, Baginton began life as a pre-war municipal aerodrome and quickly became part of the Midlands air defence and training network once war broke out. Its location on the edge of a heavily industrial region mattered: Coventry’s factories were a key target for the Luftwaffe, and fighter cover, rapid dispersal and repair capacity across the region were vital.
During 1940-41 Baginton is best remembered for its association with the Polish Air Forces in exile. No. 308 (City of Krak√≥w) Squadron operated from Baginton during this period, flying Hurricanes and later Spitfires while building an operational rhythm of patrols, interceptions and readiness to respond to raids over the Midlands. The squadron’s presence also left a human footprint: a number of Polish airmen who served at Baginton are buried locally, underlining the real cost of the intense flying programme that combined operations with constant training.
Baginton’s wartime character was shaped by the realities of an airfield that had to function on the margins of a busy city. Dispersal points, hangars and workshops supported not only the front-line needs of the station but also the broader requirement to keep aircraft serviceable. Like many wartime aerodromes, Baginton balanced the immediate demands of sortie generation with the quieter but relentless work of maintenance, gunnery harmonisation, radio checks, engine changes and battle-damage repair.
As the war progressed and the RAF’s posture evolved, Baginton’s role shifted toward a mixture of support activity and the continuation of flying training and liaison work linked to the wider Midlands RAF estate. Aircrew posted through the region used airfields like Baginton to gain local familiarity, practise formations, refine instrument flying and build confidence under supervision before being sent on to operational conversion and then to front-line units.
After 1945 Baginton returned to a civil aviation future, but its wartime years remain an important part of Coventry’s story: a city under air attack, defended by a network of airfields and by multinational RAF units whose pilots had already lost their own countries. Walking the perimeter today, the modern airport masks a landscape that once echoed with the hard, urgent sound of Merlin and Rolls-Royce engines and the constant pressure of readiness.
As with many wartime aerodromes, air-raid precautions shaped daily life: slit trenches, camouflage of buildings, controlled lighting at night, and rapid response teams for crashes or bomb damage.
Local communities often remembered the airfield through sound and spectacle – scrambles at short notice, low passes during training, and the sight of dispersed fighters tucked away on the edge of fields and hedgerows.
Post-war redevelopment inevitably erased some wartime features, but the continuity of aviation on the site helps connect modern travellers with the much earlier story of a city’s airfield under threat.
For visitors and researchers today, the most rewarding approach is to combine surviving site evidence (perimeter tracks, dispersal loops, building footprints) with squadron ORBs, logbooks and local testimony, which together recreate how the station worked day to day.