Chapter 16

1933-36. Re-inventing the wheel – the reintroduction of Observers.

At much the same time as the RAF had begun to acknowledge the inadequacy of its navigational capabilities, it was also beginning to question the effectiveness of its post-1918 aircrew manning policy. To use the Air Ministry’s own words in 1934, ‘It has been for some time clear that the present system of providing for observer duties in the Royal Air Force by the employment of airmen as air gunners, mainly on a part-time basis, has been becoming increasingly inadequate …’⁴ While there had been no shortage of enthusiastic volunteer gunners and the winged bullet was being worn with considerable pride, it had become apparent that there was little standardisation over the award of this badge. Notwithstanding the regulations published in 1921,1 the initial training of many, and the continuation training of most, part-time gunners was actually being conducted under squadron arrangements. Since there was no effective quality control mechanism, it was almost inevitable that the levels of proficiency displayed by individual airmen had been found to vary widely from unit to unit.

To redress this situation it had been decided to introduce a ‘new’ trade, that of the air observer. This had involved a great deal of staff work during 1933 to calculate the numbers that would be required, to identify the trades from which they would be drawn and to define the length and nature of the training that they were to be given. Most of the problems appeared to have been solved by the summer by which time it was estimated that a total of 453 observers would be needed.² The recurrent cost of this initiative was estimated to be of the order of £40,000 per annum plus an initial capital outlay of approximately £20,000.³

The introduction of the new trade was formally announced in August 1934.⁴ It was intended that they should all be relatively experienced, having already completed some seven years’ man (as distinct from boy) service. They were to be drawn from a variety of trades but more than 50% were expected to be wireless operator mechanics or wireless operators, the next most preferred group being armourers. Some 37% of observers were expected to be ex-apprentices, the balance being drawn from trades supported by the new boy entrant scheme which was being introduced at the same time.⁵ Those selected were to attend a two-month course at the Air Armament School at Eastchurch.⁶ The first course began on 29 October, so the first qualified observers will have begun to join the squadrons at the beginning of 1935.

Air observers were initially to be established on a basis of one per aeroplane on bomber, torpedo bomber and two-seat fighter squadrons but only one per flight in army cooperation units. Provision was made for a few to serve as sergeants, otherwise all qualified observers were to hold the rank of corporal. The long-term aim was that, with the exception of a few specific applications (notably flying boats), all part-time gunners would eventually be replaced by the new generation of observers. This was going to take an inordinately long time, however, as Eastchurch had initially been tasked with running only two ten-man courses per year.⁷

The Air Ministry was certainly aware of the limitations that this imposed as it announced that ‘the training arrangements for air observers render it improbable that each squadron will receive its full complement of air observers at one time.’ The best that could be done in the interim was to promise that the Records Office would endeavour to ensure that a unit being converted to the new observer-style establishment would be provided with its manpower from not more than two consecutive courses, which, by mid-1935, were now expected to graduate at two- to three-month intervals.⁸ Despite all this talk of ‘training’, like the air gunners they were supposed to replace, the new observers were still expected to learn much of their trade at squadron level. Also like gunners, they were to fly on a part-time basis only, the rest of their time being spent on duties connected with their original trades.

While the introduction of airmen observers had been a step in roughly the right direction, it had done very little to relieve the squadrons of their training commitment. To begin with, this problem was manageable, as it soon became apparent that the RAF simply did not have enough airmen who were both suitably experienced and qualified and who also wanted to fly. One reason for this was the heavy reliance placed on trades associated with boy entrants. Since boy entrants were admitted as young as 16 years of age, and the scheme had not been implemented until 1934, it followed that it would be 1943 before any of them would have accumulated the seven years’ man service which was a prerequisite for selection as an observer. While observers could still be drawn from skilled tradesmen who had enlisted directly from civil life such men were a finite resource which meant that, in practical terms, it would not be possible even to approach the Air Force’s stated goal of replacing all of its gunners with observers and many more of the former had to be trained.

The minimum experience level was reduced to six years in 1935; a somewhat transparent gesture, as the first cohort of boy entrants would still have to wait until 1942 and the 1935 intake of 16-year olds would not be eligible for observer training until 1943. Rather more constructively, the selection field was also widened to permit all qualified parttime gunners, who had previously been excluded from the scheme, to retrain as observers.9 These were relatively minor changes, however, and they were quite insufficient to cope with the demand for additional manpower made necessary by the various Expansion Schemes.

1936. Increasing awareness of the inadequacies of the new Observers Scheme.

In a further attempt to increase the numbers of observers, the arrangements for the provision of non-pilot aircrew were reviewed again and a revised system was introduced at the beginning of 1936.¹⁰ There were more changes to the trades from which air observers could be selected and the required experience level was further reduced from six years to just four. An unfortunate side effect of the latter concession was that it was no longer considered appropriate to guarantee automatic promotion to corporal. To avoid offending long-established peacetime conventions, the best that could be offered was elevation to corporal on completion of six years’ total service.

Unfortunately, this de facto downgrading of the status of the observer had done little to help the recruiting drive required to satisfy a revised quota which was supposed to see as many as 200 being trained during 1936. In an attempt to salvage the situation, the Air Member for Personnel (AMP), AVM F W Bowhill, hoped to persuade airmen of ‘the importance that is attached to the Observer’¹¹ by incorporating within the selection process an interview ‘by an officer not below the rank of group captain’ thus making it the same as for the internal recruiting of airman pilots.¹² This startlingly empty gesture totally failed to obscure the fact that an observer could not even be sure of acquiring two stripes whereas an airman pilot was automatically given three. This differential made the reality of the RAF’s view of ‘the importance that is attached to the Observer’ only too plain and recruiting continued to be a cause of some concern.

Although there were relatively few observers on active service by early 1936 there were enough to permit the RAF’s field commanders to draw some conclusions and AMP invited their comments. His primary concern was to stimulate recruiting but it is evident that there were considerable misgivings about many aspects of the new observers scheme and most of his correspondents took the opportunity to express their reservations. As AOC Fighting Area, AVM P B Joubert, had had the least direct experience of observers but he was sufficiently concerned about ‘this business of navigating in bad weather’ which, he wrote, ‘calls for the very highest attributes and training’ that he doubted whether any scheme that ‘put responsibility on partly trained airmen’ could be successful.¹³

AOC Western Area, AVM P H L Playfair, who had been experiencing some problems in persuading enough airmen to volunteer to fly in the cold and draughty gunners compartments of his Virginias and Heyfords, offered a number of suggestions. He believed that, if the Air Ministry was serious about its observers scheme, it would have to: increase their pay; improve their career prospects; allow them to wear a distinguishing badge; offer the option of retraining as pilots after an appropriate interval; and improve the physical environment in gunners cockpits.¹⁴

At Central Area, while Air Cdre O T Boyd had had less trouble finding people willing to fly in his day bombers, he nevertheless harboured the profoundest misgivings about the philosophy underpinning the entire scheme. Having already seen Playfair’s comments, he drafted a highly critical paper of his own. In this he attacked the basic concept of the parttime observer, arguing that:

‘The circumstances of the Airman Pilot and of the Airman Observer are identical, particularly in units equipped with two-seater aircraft. They fly an equal amount, and complete an equal amount of training in the air and on the ground. The responsibilities of the Observer in bomb-aiming, air firing and navigation are actually greater than those of the pilot, and in consequence his individual training during the first two years in a Squadron is far more onerous than that of the pilot in the same period; because:

(a) he is required to spend half his time working at his basic trade; and

(b) the pilot, who is not on a part-time basis, also enjoys the further advantage of having received a comprehensive previous training in the subjects of the ADGB Individual Scheme at his Flying Training School.¹⁵

It is, therefore, contended that, if the full-time Airman Pilot scheme is justified, then a full-time Air Observer scheme is equally justified.’¹⁶

Warming to his theme, Boyd went on to press for the introduction of direct entrant, full-time, professional observers on the grounds that the expensive technical training being given to part-timers was wasted, especially in war. What he actually wrote was that:

‘Misemployment is economically unsound, is frowned upon in modern industry for that reason, and has been regarded as anathema by the Air Ministry since 1918. Yet it would be difficult to find a more substantial case of misemployment than that inherent in the present Air Observers scheme.’

In conclusion, he pointed out that, in war, ‘the ability of a bomber squadron to find and bomb its objectives with effect is dependent almost entirely on the ability of the Air Observer in the formation leader’s and deputy leader’s aircraft.’ Boyd argued, therefore, that it was essential that observers should be full-timers, offsetting this, if necessary at the expense of junior pilots who could be put on a part-time basis.

Seen here over the mouth of the River Medway, Wapiti K2260 was one of a number that flew from Eastchurch with the Air Armament School, from 1931 onwards. (MAP)

Rather than sending his paper directly to AMP, Boyd submitted it in draft form to his CinC. This earned him a fairly sharp rebuke from Sir John Steel who took umbrage at Boyd’s rather spirited assault on the party line.17 While Boyd did moderate his views somewhat, and dropped his idea of direct recruiting, his eventual letter to AMP still pressed for observers to be employed on a full-time basis (a point with which Steel could hardly have taken issue, as he had argued for this himself as long ago as 1926 – see page 137). He also urged: that the scope of their pre-squadron training should be broadened; that their rate of pay should be increased; that their chances of becoming sergeants should be improved and that the old RFC flying ‘O’ should be reinstated.¹⁸

At much the same time, March 1936, a letter had been drafted at HQ ADGB. This forecast that in the ‘high speed cloud flying bomber of the future’ pilots would simply lack the capacity to deal with navigation. It followed, therefore, that responsibility for this would have to be passed increasingly to the observer whose training would need to be correspondingly extended and improved. Some reservations were also expressed over the diversion of personnel from the higher grade technical trades to act as observers, but this was considered to be unavoidable in order to ensure that they would have the required degree of intelligence. The idea of direct recruiting was rejected but it was considered that there was a case for each single-engined day bomber squadron to be provided with three full-time observers. Furthermore, it was thought that these full-timers should, like all airmen pilots, have the rank and pay of sergeants and that they should be permitted to wear a distinguishing badge. This letter was not endorsed by the CinC, so it was never sent, but its gist is noted here to reflect the fact that, even at ADGB, some officers were now beginning to accept that attitudes towards non-pilot aircrew would eventually have to change.¹⁹

Since he declined to follow the line indicated by his staff, Sir John Steel’s personal response to AMP’s letter seeking more active support for the recruiting of observers was confined to a recommendation that their enhanced status should be marked in some way. Specifically, he ‘strongly recommend(ed) that consideration should again be given to the question of providing a Flying Badge, of a type similar to the obsolete RFC Observers’ “Wing” for fully qualified Air Observers.’ Although the wording of the CinC’s February 1936 letter implies that this was not the first time that this suggestion had been made, the Air Council declined (again?) to reintroduce the badge.²⁰

1936. Early modifications to the Observers Scheme and increasing demand for further improvement.

Meanwhile, what of training? Although it was now intended to train as many as 200 observers per annum, the commitment which had been placed on Eastchurch was still specifically confined to providing formal instruction only in gunnery and bombing. Any necessary role-related training in navigation, photography, signalling and ‘look out’ was to be provided under unit arrangements once an observer had been posted to an operational squadron. In the meantime, the increase in the numbers of observers passing through Eastchurch had already created accommodation problems. The pressure was relieved by setting up a subsidiary Air Armament School at Leuchars. This sub-unit, which was to handle the training of RAF air gunners (and armoured car crews and naval telegraphist air gunners – see pages 161-162), had opened on 1 April 1935.

When a headcount was made in December 1936, neither of Bomber Command’s Gordon units, Nos 35 and 207 Sqns, had any observers on strength. This is No 35 Sqn’s K2689. (MAP)

Fig 24. The manning situation with respect to observers in Nos 1 and 2 Gps in December 1936.

This arrangement had always been regarded as a temporary one, however, and by June plans were already being laid for the establishment of a permanent unit. These came to fruition six months later when the school at Leuchars was moved to North Coates Fittes where, now retitled the Air Observers School (AOS), it resumed operations on 1 January 1936. As its name implied, North Coates’ primary function was to teach the eight-week observers course, responsibility for this having been transferred from Eastchurch, but it also trained RAF and RN air gunners.²¹

Despite the efforts that were being made to increase training capacity, observers were still relatively thin on the ground in the autumn of 1936, their numbers being well short of the twelve per squadron that most bomber units were supposed to have (in peacetime). Nevertheless, there were enough of them to have demonstrated their potential value but, to realise this potential fully, it would be necessary to implement, at least some of, the changes that Area Commanders had been pressing for earlier in the year. With the aims of improving, ie lengthening, the training of observers and of enhancing their status, SASO Bomber Command, Air Cdre D C S Evill, began to build a case that he would eventually present in February 1937 (see page 157). As a starting point, he wanted to know how many observers were actually available and what proportion of these could be regarded as being satisfactory.²²

Views were also sought on the feasibility of reducing the establishment of observers to two per flight, ie six per squadron, rather than the current one for each of the twelve aeroplanes on charge, the remaining cockpits to be occupied by gunners. This suggestion was based on the likelihood that, if it did prove possible to secure an extension of training the increased cost would have to be offset by a corresponding decrease in throughput. Reducing the establishment was simply a means of adjusting the requirement so that it more closely matched the manpower that was actually likely to be available. In other words it was a classic case of cutting one’s coat according to one’s cloth – thus does pragmatism drive policy.

The returns submitted by Nos 1 and 2 Gps (which omitted the unique case of No 101 Sqn’s twin-engined, two-pilot Overstrands) are summarised at Figure 24. At a notional twelve per squadron, the sixteen units listed had an overall requirement for 192 observers; only eighty were actually available. Indeed, even allowing for Evill’s tentatively suggested 50% reduction, there would still have been a shortfall of sixteen.

But Evill’s proposal had attracted little support. SASO 2 Gp, Gp Capt Charles Blount, was prepared to live with two per flight while WW I-style daylight formation bombing tactics continued to be the order of the day; that is to say during what was left of the biplane era. But once the Battle and Blenheim had entered service he anticipated an increasing tendency for aircraft to operate in isolation, which implied that each one was going to need an observer.23 No 1 Gp’s Air Cdre Owen Boyd considered it essential to provide an observer in each aeroplane, even if formation bombing continued to be the norm, because it would be necessary to cater for a formation being broken up by weather or enemy action.²⁴

On the other hand, SASO 3 Gp, Gp Capt L L MacLean, took a very different view. No 3 Gp’s perception was conditioned by the fact that each of its Heyfords and Virginias was established to have two pilots, one of whom functioned as navigator and bomb aimer, which left the observer with little to do beyond manning a machine gun for which he was clearly going to be overqualified. At the time, each of the eleven squadrons which then constituted the RAF’s heavy brigade was supposed to have ten observers, making the total requirement 110. There were actually only nine on strength. All nine were considered to be ‘average’ but this rating was qualified by an observation to the effect that all units were so heavily committed to the training of a large influx of newly qualified pilots that it had been possible to devote very little effort to polishing the professional skills of observers in their notional roles as air gunners and bomb aimers plus a little navigation on the side.²⁵ In short, while No 3 Gp supported the idea of improving the Observers Scheme in principle, it had little practical experience of observers and, indeed, actually had little use for them.

In the meantime some marginal improvements in the observer’s lot had already been introduced. Perhaps because its withdrawal in January 1936 had proved to be a disincentive to prospective volunteers, before the year was out the Air Council had reinstated the very substantial ‘perk’ of accelerated promotion to corporal.²⁶ At the same time the air observer’s trade was given increased substance by the introduction of a dedicated pay scale. When the introduction of observers had first been announced in 1934 it had been envisaged that they would simply continue to receive the pay applicable to their rank and seniority within their original Trade Group, supplemented by the same shilling-a-day crew pay plus sixpence per day qualification pay as was drawn by air gunners. From November 1936, however, a junior corporal observer was to be paid at an inclusive rate of nine shillings per day, the entitlement to additional allowances being withdrawn. The rate for a junior sergeant observer, not that there were many of them, was eleven shillings. By comparison, a junior sergeant pilot (and all airmen pilots were at least sergeants) drew 12/6d.

When some observers began to be cross-trained as pilots in 1938 it was initially assumed that they would be entitled to flying instructional pay, which was then being drawn by trainee pilots at a rate of two shillings per day. Because the flat rate for qualified observers was deemed to include an element to cover flying risks, however, it was ruled that, until they gained their ‘wings’ and were remustered as pilots, they would continue to be paid as observers but that they would not be entitled to any further allowances.²⁷

This was clearly a cunning ruse on the part of the Treasury, as the flying element of the observer’s inclusive rate was only 1/6d. The Exchequer was therefore saving itself 6d per day per observer. No doubt this rankled, but no one appears to have been sufficiently moved by the injustice being done to mere corporals to make an issue of it. This anomaly would eventually be removed, but not until 1941, perhaps because by that time large numbers of potential officers were being short-changed (see page 191).

A Mk III Lewis in the front gunner’s station of one of No 10 Sqn’s Heyfords, which really ought to have been occupied by an observer. In this case the immaculate white overalls suggest a picture posed for publicity purposes and, since the ‘gunner’ is clearly a sergeant, this chap was almost certainly a pilot taking the opportunity to bask in a spot of limelight.

1935-38. The scarcity of Observers prolongs the trade of the Air Gunner and aggravates the training problem at squadron level.

Since policy dictated that practically all gunners were eventually to be replaced by observers, in 1936 it was decided to dispense with the handful of full-time gunners still being carried on the establishment of bomber squadrons.²⁸ This represented only a marginal reduction in the overall training requirement for gunners, however, and it did nothing to compensate for the system’s inability to provide the numbers of observers that were required.

It will be appreciated that, while an observer was expected to be able to function as both gunner and bomb-aimer, the reverse was not (supposed to be) the case. As a result, the gunner’s course had been shortened to just four weeks and its content confined to topics directly related to gunnery. In practice, however, like Eastchurch and Leuchars before it, North Coates simply lacked the capacity to handle anything like the numbers involved. In 1936 the Air Ministry was obliged to acknowledge this in the following statement. ‘In due course all air gunners for units at home and abroad will be trained at the Air Observers School in the first instance, but for the present […] airmen may be selected by COs for training in units …’29

Needless to say, in-house training continued to be the normal practice in units stationed overseas. A first-hand account of what this involved has been provided by Flt Lt (then AC1) James Paine.³⁰ Having previously qualified as a W/T operator at the Electrical and Wireless School at Cranwell,³¹ and having accumulated two or three hours of airborne time in the process, Paine was posted to No 8 Sqn at Khormaksar in 1934. While stationed in Aden he picked up the rudiments of navigation, bomb-aiming, photography and the like, which made him a de facto observer, although he was formally recognised only as a gunner. As he recalls:

‘The only formal instruction we ever received was on the Lewis gun, the rest we had to pick up from our fellow flying Crew.’ (Such instruction as was provided was) ‘in the time honoured Eastchurch fashion, whereby one learned the words from the Manual, and repeated it parrot fashion. It still sticks in the memory – the left stop pawl spring stop stud bears against the face of the right stop pawl spring stop stud and rotates the magazine one corrugation.’

The officer overseeing this practice (and all other RAF affairs in Aden) at the time was Gp Capt C F A Portal who, in view of his own early experiences, may well have considered that Paine had little to complain about (see pages 11-12).

Another informative description of contemporary backseat flying has been left us by Wg Cdr C T Kimber, who joined the recently re-formed No 83 Sqn at Turnhouse in October 1936. Then a corporal fitter I, he was soon allocated a Hind of his own to look after and, apparently on the grounds that he had applied for pilot training, discovered that he was also expected to fly as its gunner. Like Paine, Charles Kimber was ‘trained’ on the squadron and, again like Paine, he found that being a gunner virtually amounted to being an observer:³²

‘I was flying regularly and becoming absorbed in the art of navigation by the method known as dead reckoning. Flying as navigator in a Hind involved the use of a Bigsworth board; a simple pair of hinged boards, one of which was transparent (see page 373). The map was sandwiched between the boards, and a graduated straightedge, combined with a protractor, enabled the navigator to draw tracks and courses on the transparency. The navigator sat with his back to the pilot, exposed to the blast of the slipstream on the upper half of his body. He obtained his instrument readings, airspeed, height, temperature and compass, by standing erect and looking over the pilot’s shoulder.’

Considering that it had been introduced in 1923 and continued to be issued for the next sixteen years, photographs of airmen wearing the brass winged bullet are surprisingly hard to come by. This one was taken in the Middle East alongside a Lysander and probably dates from the summer of 1939. Because many inter-war gunners had originally been trained as wireless operators, the majority also wore the ‘hand and thunderbolt’ badge, as in this case. Introduced in 1918, and still worn today by NCOs and airmen of ground radio engineering trades, the ‘hand and thunderbolt’, is the only RAF badge as old as the pilots badge. (RAF Museum 5860-1)

Some idea of what Kimber meant by ‘flying regularly’ is conveyed by the fact that he flew on no fewer than twenty-seven occasions in February 1937, mostly bombing practice, using the camera obscura, rather than live weapons. During an Armament Practice Camp at Leuchars in March, he flew three times a day.

A third account by a pre-war back-seater, Dennis Conroy, serves to underline yet again the fact that there was little difference between an observer and a gunner in the 1930s. While the former had the advantage of having attended a formal course, albeit one of somewhat limited scope, in practical terms, they did the same things once they were airborne. Conroy joined No 208 Sqn in Egypt in 1937. Already qualified as an armourer, he soon parlayed this into flying as an air gunner. Having begun his in-house ‘course’ on 3 December 1937, he was awarded his winged bullet badge on 29 April 1938 ‘after flying with my flight commander (C Flight) F/Lt Alastair P W Cane in Audax K3112 performing a Wind Speed and Direction exercise using the 3-course method and the 90 degree method, with me using the bomb-sight at 10,000 feet.’33

Some units, including Nos 7, 10 and 58 Sqns, were issued with early production Whitleys that had been delivered without some of their operational equipment, notably, as here, both turrets and a bomb-aiming station. (Ray Sturtivant)

Thereafter he flew in the squadron’s Audaxes and Lysanders until the end of 1940. As such he was responsible for at least some, and often all, aspects of signalling, photography, navigation, bombing and gunnery. Of the latter, he observed drily that, ‘Shooting at a moving target with a freely moving Lewis gun fitted to a moving aircraft was easy. Hitting that target was very difficult.’³⁴

Because the shortfall in properly qualified observers meant that large numbers of these old-style, part-time gunners continued to be required, it became necessary to reconsider the arrangements for selecting and training these men. To widen the recruiting field, previous restrictions on the proportions to be drawn from each trade were considerably relaxed and airmen who were entitled to apply now became eligible for selection as gunners as early as their first year of service.

For reasons which will be explained later, responsibility for the instruction of the majority of air gunners had to remain at unit level until as late as 1939. Squadrons were well used to dealing with this aspect of training, of course, but their workload had been considerably increased since 1935 by the imposition of a substantial, post-graduate training commitment with respect to observers. Furthermore, in accordance with long-standing practice, FTSs were required to teach only basic flying skills. Pilots therefore joined their first squadrons with little awareness of applied flying within an operational context and this aspect of their instruction was carried out locally during their first postgraduate year. In effect, therefore, most squadrons in the expanding RAF of the mid-1930s were functioning largely as advanced training units, which seriously degraded their operational capability.

The scale of the pilot training task was to be substantially increased by the need to convert to new types of aircraft, this process frequently being complicated by slow deliveries. Although it was bound to involve yet more conversion work, in order to ensure that there were at least some modern aeroplanes to fly, interim types often had to be issued.³⁵

Delays and difficulties in training were not confined to pilots, because when new aircraft did arrive they often lacked vital role equipment. Early Whitleys, for example, often reached the squadrons devoid of gun turrets. In the context of navigation, this was a pity because, by tracking an object with his sight and reading off the deflection from the fuselage centreline, the gunner in a tail or ventral turret could provide the observer with a more or less instant read out of drift, without the latter having to struggle about the fuselage, possibly humping a portable oxygen bottle, in order to use the drift sight.³⁶

Early Whitleys without turrets, also lacked a bomb-aiming station which obviously precluded bombing practice which, in turn, prevented crews from working-up as a team. These were not the Whitley’s only shortcomings, nor was it the only type to display them. As late as the spring of 1939 Bomber Command was still complaining about a lack of turrets along with many other problems which were shared with the Battle, Blenheim and Harrow, including: ‘indifferent navigational facilities; absence of automatic controls; no floatation gear; insufficient oxygen supply; no vacuum pumps for blind flying instruments; no electrically heated pitot heads; no de-icing apparatus; inefficient cockpit heating or none at all; inefficient blind flying hoods; inadequate emergency exits.37

In fact serviceability problems arising from these and other factors meant that flying hours of any kind were so limited that, a year earlier, AOC 4 Gp, Air Cdre Arthur Harris, had drawn Bomber Command’s attention to the problem by pointing out that No 10 Sqn’s pilots had averaged just five hours per month on their new Whitleys during 1937.³⁸

Then again, while many of the new aeroplanes were wired for telephonic intercommunication, there were often insufficient helmets fitted with the necessary microphones and headsets to go round. Apart from the lack of equipment, some of that which was available was unsuitable. For instance, the standard bomb sight in use at the time had been calibrated for aeroplanes of the biplane era. When No 139 Sqn tried to use them in 1937, they found that at 10,000 feet their new Blenheims were so fast that they simply ran off the end of the airspeed scale.³⁹

To cap it all, as each new squadron was formed it had to be provided with a nucleus of competent aviators. These could be provided only by robbing existing units of their more capable personnel, causing constant instability in any attempt to form constituted crews and further diluting the experience level on the units from which they were taken.⁴⁰

1935. A new approach to the training of pilots.

In an attempt to relieve the excessive training commitment at squadron level, while simultaneously catering for the vastly increased numbers involved, a new approach to pilot training was announced in 1935.⁴¹ The scheme introduced a number of innovations, the most significant of which was that, with the exception of Cranwell cadets, all prospective Service pilots were to begin their training, as civilians, at a commercially operated flying school. At the time there were already four such schools in commission⁴² and the 1935 scheme led to contracts being awarded to a further nine.

In 1935 an entirely new approach to the training of RAF pilots was adopted with the first 50 flying hours now being provided by civil schools run on Air Ministry contracts. This Tiger Moth, G-ADNY, was one of the fleet operated by the Bristol Flying School at Yatesbury. (Yatesbury Association)

The, initially eight-week, elementary course provided a grounding in basic aviation theory plus 50 hours of airborne time. Candidates for short service commissions who succeeded in completing this civilian-run phase subsequently reported to the RAF Depot at Uxbridge to be uniformed, kitted out and introduced to drill and military discipline. After (notionally) two weeks, by now acting pilot officers, they were posted to a Service-run FTS. Serving airmen being trained as pilots also gained their first flying experience at a civil school, but from there they proceeded directly to an FTS, rather than via Uxbridge.

At FTSs pupils were to be given their intermediate and advanced instruction on service, rather than training, types (typically variants of the Hawker Hart). The syllabus had been considerably expanded so that it now included formation, night and instrument flying plus practical experience in navigation and live armament training. The intention was to ensure that when future pilots reported to their first squadrons they would already be familiar with most of the skills that they had previously had to acquire during their first year of ‘productive’ service. This would lighten the burden currently being carried by Flight Commanders and permit them to integrate new pilots into operational training activities very shortly after they arrived.

Unfortunately, this aim was to be only partially realised. The same conflict between quality and quantity as had blighted RFC training in WW I cropped up again in 1935. Almost inevitably, just as in 1917, quantity had to be given the higher priority. In order to maintain the required throughput it was simply not possible to introduce the scheme entirely as planned. From the outset, therefore, the duration of the nine-month Service-run phase of the course had to be reduced to six months.

It was always the intention to introduce the full nine-month course when circumstances permitted but, until late 1938, circumstances never did. It was, for instance, mid-1936, a full year after the concept had been announced, before any night flying was undertaken.43 The main stumbling block continued to be numbers but there were other complications. The greatest of these was that the schools were all equipped with single-engined biplanes with fixed undercarriages whereas the squadrons soon began to receive twin-engined monoplanes with wheels that went up and down. Even if the schools had been able to deliver the full nine-month curriculum, therefore, the squadrons would still have been faced with a major training task in that they frequently had to convert pilots onto aeroplanes with operating characteristics which were fundamentally different from those with which they were familiar.

This problem began to be addressed in the autumn of 1936 when some Ansons were made available to No 6 FTS at Netheravon but it was early 1938 before the RAF began to take delivery of substantial numbers of Oxfords, the type which had been specifically ordered for twin-engined training. Their availability permitted the consolidation of a streaming policy, which had already been introduced, whereby, depending upon their aptitude (and the, always overriding, ‘exigencies of the Service’), pilots were selected for fighters or heavier types, and attended appropriately specialised courses. Further improvement stemmed from the acquisition of modern, purpose-built basic and advanced monoplane trainers, the Magister, Master and Harvard, all of which had entered service before the outbreak of war.

While these developments represented significant advances, there were still shortfalls in the applied flying content of the syllabus, although incremental improvements were introduced as time and facilities permitted. For instance, to provide trainees with some practical experience of using live weapons, a month’s detachment to an Armament Practice Camp (later Station) had been incurporated into the programme in 1936, and the acquisition of Link Trainers in 1938 represented a major advance in the context of instrument flying.⁴⁴

Nevertheless, while steady progress was made in enhancing the content of flying training, there was never enough of it. Certainly not enough to realise the RAF’s stated ambition which was to produce a generation of pilots capable of coping with operational flying as soon as they reported to their first squadrons. Even so, the RAF could reasonably claim that it was training its pilots to a higher standard during the later 1930s than it had ever done before. This was just as well, of course, because the size, performance and complexity of the aeroplanes that were entering service meant that the demands that it was placing on its newly qualified pilots were also greater than ever before.

1936. The Waghorn Paper.

By the summer of 1936 the expansion of the RAF was well under way with most newly formed bomber squadrons being initially equipped with single-engined, biplane light bombers, usually Hawker Hinds. This was merely an interim measure, however, since current planning envisaged that the Service would soon dispense with light bombers altogether. Under Scheme F, which was expected to be complete by March 1939, the RAF’s striking force was to comprise nearly 600 medium and heavy bombers with another 400 in reserve.⁴⁵ These aeroplanes, Wellingtons, Hampdens, Whitleys and Blenheims, would fly faster, higher and much further than most of those to which the RAF had long been accustomed. Those in the know were also aware that the Air Ministry had already issued specifications for the next generation of even heavier bombers, the twin-engined Warwick (to B.1/35), HP 56⁴⁶ and Manchester (both to P. 13/36) and the four-engined Stirling (to B.12/36). In informed circles, the implications of these developments were beginning to cause concern and this began to manifest itself among the trustees of the RAF’s navigational expertise, the graduates of the Long N and Specialist Navigation Courses.

They knew that the increased attention being paid to navigation training since 1932 was more apparent than real. It was true that post-graduate courses had been revised and that more people were attending them but the Long N men were aware that these courses were largely theoretical and that very little time was being devoted to practical navigation training at squadron level. The key word was ‘practical’, reflecting the belief that a navigator probably derived more of real value in a three-hour flight than he did in three days of classroom work – and that a navigator who had done very little air work was hardly worthy of the name.

Authoritative, first-hand testimony as to the inadequacy of the training being provided at squadron level has been provided by Gp Capt F C Richardson. Having spent the previous three years flying around Africa in Victorias of No 216 Sqn, he reported to Manston in 1937 to attend, first an ‘sn’, and then a six-month Specialist Navigation Course. He found that ‘the three-month preliminary air navigation course revealed that I scarcely knew anything about the theory of air navigation and also very little about its proper application! I had just been very lucky.’⁴⁷

Richardson had begun his flying training in 1933, after all of the ‘improvements’ in navigation training were supposed to have been implemented. It is quite plain from his observations, however, that little of any substance had actually been achieved. It is interesting to note that, for much of his time with No 216 Sqn, ‘Dickie’ Richardson’s Flight Commander had been Sqn Ldr Philip Mackworth. Mackworth, a graduate of the 1921 Long Navigation Course, was one of the RAF’s very few real experts in air navigation. Navigation was held in such low esteem, however, that he was ‘quietly and unkindly dubbed as “a bit of an old woman” because he tried to improve the squadron’s primitive navigation practices when most of his colleagues thought they were good enough.’48

‘… the annual Egypt-to-the-Cape flight, stuck close to well-established trade routes …’ This Fairey IIIF, KR1713, of No 45 Sqn was one of five which, accompanied by four of No 216 Sqn’s Victorias, carried out, in 1934, the annual exercise that demonstrated the RAF’s ability to reinforce South Africa.

In the summer of 1936 all of these concerns were articulated in a paper penned by Flt Lt D J Waghorn.⁴⁹ In this, he acknowledged that the RAF had made, and continued to make, some spectacular long distance flights. But he argued that few of these actually made much demand on true navigational skills since, for reasons of safety (and economy in recovering aeroplanes forced to land en route) most of these, including, for instance, the annual Egypt-to-the-Cape flight, stuck close to well-established trade routes, rivers, railways and so on. Furthermore, he claimed that in conducting these expeditions ‘only once has a specialist navigation officer been employed.’⁵⁰

Even more damagingly, Waghorn went on to review the current employment of the RAF’s navigational experts. At that time the Air Force List contained a total of forty-three officers annotated with an N. Ten of them were squadron leaders or above and another seven were being employed on purely administrative tasks; none of these men would have had much, if any, contact with flying operations. Twenty had some academic involvement with navigation. Of these: three were specialist instructors in astronomical techniques; five were filling navigation staff appointments at a variety of headquarters and twelve were instructors at FTSs where they delivered ‘a course of instruction of about ten lectures of the most elementary kind (involving) not one thing they learned on the long navigation course.’ That left just six who were serving with bomber or flying boat squadrons and who were therefore in current practice. In short, Waghorn deplored the state of the RAF’s navigational capabilities and castigated the Service for wasting the investment it had made in training a handful of men to become specialists in this particular field.

He went on to discuss the potential of airborne radio direction finding but, while acknowledging its value for homing, dismissed it as being too reliant on the availability of vulnerable or politically unreliable transmitters and too inaccurate for long-range work in any case. Ground-based D/F stations suffered from the same inherent inaccuracy with regard to range and had the considerable disadvantage in wartime of requiring the aircraft to break radio silence. That left the somewhat neglected technique of celestial navigation. Waghorn recognised the limitations of the bubble sextants which were currently available, particularly when used in turbulent conditions, but he argued that most of these could be overcome by flying at altitudes in excess of 15,000 feet where an aircraft would generally be flying above cloud and in relatively smooth air.

Finally, Waghorn observed that French airliners flying to Berlin and German airliners calling at Paris and Croydon were said to carry, as a supernumerary crew member, an air force officer masquerading as a civilian. He wondered whether this practice might not be adopted by the RAF, permitting its officers to gain experience of long distance operations by flying with Imperial Airways on routes to, say, Egypt via Malta. In conclusion, he pressed for the establishment of a course at which Specialist Navigators could teach ‘real’ navigation to squadron pilots and for the RAF to introduce some form of practical long-distance navigation exercise.

Since it was highly critical of the RAF’s capabilities and thus, by implication, of its higher administration, Waghorn’s paper was a remarkably outspoken document for a junior officer to have written in the 1930s. It might well have attracted instant retribution (as Air Cdre Boyd had discovered a few months earlier – see page 147) and/or been consigned to the wastepaper basket but, fortunately, Waghorn’s Station Commander, Gp Capt C C Darley was sympathetic and, with his endorsement, it soon found its way to HQ 23 Gp. There the acting AOC, Air Cdre A G R Garrod, added a lengthy letter of support and amplification before forwarding it to the Air Ministry.51 It eventually landed on the desk of the very influential Deputy Director of Plans, Gp Capt A T Harris. The latter was sufficiently moved by the submission to write a five-page memorandum on the subject.⁵² Harris agreed, at least in principle, with most of what Waghorn had to say and added his own weight by concluding that ‘the general attitude in the Service towards navigation […] is deplorable and the standard is lamentable.’

Harris did have reservations over some of Waghorn’s recommendations, however, particularly with regard to the Service’s tendency to indulge in the theoretical when it came to teaching navigation, and he pressed for all such instruction to be made essentially practical. He based this recommendation on the personal experience he had acquired through his having been obliged to attend two navigation courses.⁵³ Harris complained that on both of these he had been subjected to ‘hours of explanation of the principles of magnetism’ and instructed on ‘how to make a compass.’ He pointed out, somewhat waspishly, that ‘all I require to know about magnetism is the fact that a compass needle points in a certain direction, and I don’t care a hoot why it does so.’ He drove his underlying message home with the tart observation that ‘the trouble with all experts is their tendency to surround their art with a mass of clap-trap, and to delight in making it unnecessarily difficult to the uninitiated, and thereby to add, by implication, to the glory of their own achievements and ability.’

Waghorn’s paper had succeeded in, once again, focusing attention on the inadequacies of the RAF’s approach to navigation and it had certainly served to stimulate high-level discussion of the topic. It is impossible to say whether it actually exerted any influence on policy, but it was probably no coincidence that the RAF began seriously to investigate the potential of celestial navigation in 1937. This led to the adoption of astro as a standard technique in the following year. On the other hand, while the number of people being taught something of the art of air navigation increased markedly during the remaining three years of peace, there was to be little material improvement in the quality of the instruction being provided. Waghorn’s specific plea for the introduction of realistic long distance navigational exercises was never satisfied either, largely because of a lack of safety equipment which meant that most aircraft were prohibited from venturing far from land.

1937. Pilots begin to lose their exclusive authority over aircraft navigation.

As previously noted, by the early 1930s the RAF had begun to accept that its navigational skills were less than adequate. Having recognised the symptoms, however, it had then proceeded to diagnose their cause incorrectly and, as a result, the treatment prescribed – additional doses of navigation training for pilots – had failed to effect a cure. This was because pilots did not present a solution to the problem. In fact, they were the problem. But, having fostered the image of the omnipotent pilot ever since 1919, it had become very difficult for the Air Force to accept that there was anything that they could not do. It is not suggested that pilots were incapable of functioning as navigators, of course, but it is contended that few of them had much enthusiasm for this aspect of flying – which amounts to much the same thing in the end. Unfortunately, the notional increase in the attention being paid to air navigation since 1932 had failed to bring about any significant change in the attitudes of pilots and, as a result, there had been little detectable improvement in their navigational skills over the next five years.

The problem of dealing with navigation had been exacerbated by a preoccupation with the practicalities of ‘cloud flying’ to which frequent references can be found in staff papers of the early 1930s. While improvements in instrumentation and the refinement of handling techniques meant that prolonged flying in cloud was becoming an increasingly realistic proposition, it was inevitable that this required the pilot’s total concentration, thus precluding his dealing with the equally time-consuming discipline of dead reckoning. Work was in hand to develop a reliable system of ‘automatic control’ to reduce the pilot’s burden but it would be several years before such devices would be in widespread service at squadron level.

Furthermore, since pilots had been demonstrably unable (or unwilling) to handle navigation competently in the past, there was growing concern as to how they would fare in the aeroplanes which were beginning to enter service by 1937, let alone those that were being projected for the future. The length of the intended nine-month flying training course was still constrained to just six months, however, so there was little realistic prospect of an early improvement in the abilities of the junior pilots in the rapidly expanding air force. As a result, most of these inexperienced young men had their hands too full simply coping with flying to be able to pay much attention to navigation. It was clear that, if navigation really was going to be addressed more seriously in the future, it would require more time than even the most capable of pilots could afford to devote to it.

By the spring of 1936 the staff at ADGB had clearly recognised this trend, even if their CinC, Sir John Steel, had been disinclined to raise the issue with AMP at the time (see page 147). Nevertheless, by the end of that year there was an increasingly widespread acceptance that it was unreasonable to expect a pilot to be able to cope simultaneously with the demands of both flying and navigating.

An obvious solution to this problem would be to make greater use of the observer. This was hardly a new idea, having been advanced at least as early as 1933 when, before the new category had even been introduced, Air Mshl Sir Robert Brooke-Popham had urged that the basic training of all observers should include a comprehensive two-month course at the new Air Pilotage School at Andover. This idea had been rejected on what had amounted to economic grounds. Rather than training observers to a high standard of proficiency, the RAF opted for the lowest common denominator, ie bombing and gunnery only, with any other role-related skills being picked up at squadron level.54 It was difficult to avoid the budgetary attractions of this sort of cheap and cheerful approach and, having already done it in the past, this would not be the last occasion on which the Air Force would short change itself in the context of observer training.

In the wake of a May 1937 decision, which added four weeks of navigation training to the, previously eight-week, observers course, three Ansons were delivered to the AOS at North Coates in July; this is one of them, K8828.

‘The aircraft used in training was the Westland Wallace.’ This one, K3569, was with No 3 Armament Training Camp (later Station) at Sutton Bridge. Note the drogue for air firing practice stowed in the container beneath the fuselage. (N D Welch)

By late 1936 opinion was becoming increasingly divided between those who advocated giving the observer responsibility for navigation and those who were most reluctant to concede any element of the pilot’s authority – especially not to a corporal! In fact the latter group counter-proposed that the observer should be done away with altogether. Their recommendation was that the Air Force should maintain its original aim of improving the navigational skills of all pilots and that the necessary load-sharing should be achieved by replacing the observer with a second pilot who would act as general assistant to the captain while having primary responsibility for navigation and bomb aiming. In other words, to capitalise on what had long been the practice in larger aeroplanes and make two pilots the universal standard.

To begin with the ‘pilots only’ faction had their way and in February 1937 it was decided that, wherever possible, a second pilot was to be provided in place of an observer.⁵⁵ While this approach had substantially reduced the numerical requirement for observers, it had automatically created a corresponding demand for additional (and more expensive) pilots. It would take many months for the system to recruit and train these extra pilots and, as part of the price that had to be paid for producing larger numbers, the prospect of introducing the nine-month flying training course receded even further into the future.

Furthermore, to avoid emasculating the second one, a two-pilot solution could not sensibly be applied to aeroplanes that lacked any provision for dual control, eg Battles, Blenheims and Wellesleys. So, like it or not, to permit the (only) pilot to be relieved of responsibility for navigation in these cases, the Service would still have to rely on observers, albeit in substantially reduced numbers. This meant that observers, who until now had been trained only in gunnery and bomb-aiming, would in future have to be given formal instruction in navigation to the same standard as pilots. In May 1937, therefore, a four-week navigation element ‘similar to the instruction given to a pilot at a Flying Training School’ was added to the syllabus at North Coates, extending the overall duration of the course to twelve weeks.⁵⁶ The announcement of this change in policy was accompanied by the caveat that observers could not ‘for the present be trained up to complete operational standard at the Air Observers’ School.’ As a result, squadrons would be expected to provide most of their new observers with further tuition for a period of six months.

Cpl Kimber was an early graduate of this extended course, having passed through North Coates in September-December 1937. He describes the course as follows:⁵⁷

‘Lectures, flying, analyses and remedies followed in rapid order. Each meticulously discharged. The only light relief, although full of meaning, were the ad hoc competitions in stripping and reassembling a Lewis gun – blindfold. No one entered the lists if his time was greater than one minute. The aircraft used in training was the Westland Wallace, reliable but not of the operational class for the immediate years ahead. Lectures were well-organised and thorough, and I learned much of the theory of bombing and navigation.’

Westland Wessex, G-ACHI, was one of a pair operated as radio and navigation trainers by Air Service Training at Hamble; other types in the fleet included the Avro 619, Avro 652 and DH 89.

The increased attention being paid to navigation, and official recognition of the need to provide supervised continuation training, led to the establishment of Squadron Navigation Officers on bomber squadrons being raised to one per flight. This effectively tripled the numbers required but, despite doubling the intake from ten to twenty students per ‘sn’ course and reducing its length from thirteen weeks to ten, Manston was quite unable to satisfy the demand.58 In an earlier attempt to increase the numbers of Squadron Navigation Officers, it had been agreed that a broadly comparable civil certificate would be an acceptable alternative qualification.⁵⁹ It was decided to extend this principle and two civil schools were contracted to train additional pilots in navigation to a notionally ‘sn’ equivalent standard.⁶⁰

1937. The flying ‘O’ is reinstated.

The officers attending the February 1937 meeting, which had introduced both the two-pilot option and the concept of the observer as navigator, had spent some time considering the implications of the latter decision. Air Cdre D C S Evill (SASO, Bomber Command) had emerged as the chief spokesman for observers on that occasion and he had raised two important issues. The first was that the training of observers was quite inadequate for the task that they would be expected to fulfil. Evill was well aware of the intention to provide three ‘sn’s per squadron and he allowed that this would ‘better the position, but only to a comparatively small extent.’ His second point was that observers lacked the status that ought to be associated with their considerable responsibilities.

The flying ‘O’ of 1915-18 was reinstated in October 1937.

The meeting eventually made the following recommendations: that corporal observers should be eligible for promotion to sergeant after a relatively brief period of squadron service; that their pay should be equal to (or only slightly less than) that of NCO pilots; that, in view of the demands that would be made on their time, on the ground as well as in the air, observers should be employed as full-time aircrew; and that they should be entitled to wear a distinguishing emblem, similar to that worn by observers during WW I.⁶¹

This was pretty much what AVM Playfair and Air Cdre Boyd had been arguing for in the spring of 1936 when the latter’s challenging of the party line had earned him a sharp reproach (see page 147). It is some measure of the speed with which perceptions were changing that only a year later these heretical views had actually become the party line. All of the recommendations endorsed at the February 1937 meeting would eventually be implemented, the first being the reinstatement of the old flying ‘O’ badge in October⁶² (although they did not actually become available until March 1938⁶³). In order to wear it the initial requirements were that an observer had to have:

a. passed an air observers course;

b. served at least six months on a squadron;

c. flown a minimum of fifty hours as observer; and

d. been recommended by his CO.

It may be of interest to consider the contemporary requirements governing the award of a pilots flying badge.⁶⁴ In addition to passing written examinations in allied subjects, he had to:

a. have accumulated a minimum of eighty hours of flying, of which twenty had to have been on a service type;

b. be able to fly a service type reliably and accurately by day, both in clear air and by the use of instruments, and land consistently well ‘at low speeds’;

c. be able to execute normal and aerobatic manoeuvres appropriate to the type on which he had been trained;

d. be able to recover from abnormal positions solely by use of instruments;

e. have climbed to 15,000 feet in a service type and remained there for thirty minutes; and

f. have flown a service type on two triangular crosscountry flights of at least 200 miles.

It is interesting to observe that, apart from reflecting the increased capabilities of the aeroplanes of the 1930s and including competence in instrument flying, these requirements were much the same as those published as long ago as 1916 (see pages 45-46).

The reintroduction of the flying ‘O’ had effectively reinstated the WW I situation in that there were, once again, two kinds of recognised, ie badged, aviators. Would the RAF capitalise on the lessons it had learned during 1918 and treat them with equal respect, or would it revert to the discredited practices of the RFC? With somewhat depressing predictability, it ignored past experience and reintroduced the bad old days of 1917. This is worthy of further consideration.

While the reappearance of the flying ‘O’ was obviously a positive step, the reintroduction of what amounted to a period of probationary service was just as obviously a step backwards. Arguably, this could have been justified by the restricted scope of the formal observers training course and the stated need for additional instruction to be provided at unit level. But, if the experience of WW I had taught nothing else, it had surely demonstrated that such a halfhearted approach to training was highly unsatisfactory. By the summer of 1918 an observer was not (supposed to be) posted to a squadron until he was qualified to wear his badge and this was not awarded until he had completed a comprehensive sequence of courses. This policy had emerged as a result of four years of bitter wartime experience and, once defined, it was regarded as being of such fundamental importance that it was implemented under wartime conditions, regardless of the complications that this had caused. The RAF was also under considerable pressure in the 1930s, as a result of the Expansion Schemes, but the demands which they made can hardly have been comparable to those of war.

For the Air Council to have placed so much reliance on squadron-based training strongly suggests that it was either ignorant of the lessons learned between 1914 and 1918 or that it had deliberately chosen to ignore them. Since its members had all been serving officers in 1918, it seems hardly conceivable that the Air Council would not have known about the training procedures in use at that time. Even if they did suffer from a corporate loss of memory, surely one of the Air Ministry’s long-term civil servants would have remembered and reminded them. Furthermore, Volume V of the Official History had been published as recently as 1935 and at least one member of the Air Council must surely have leafed through it, if only to see whether his youthful exploits had been mentioned.⁶⁵ Since training was high on the current agenda, someone must also have taken the time to see what Volume V had to say about this topic. It summarised the late-war position and referred readers with a particular interest in training to FS 39.⁶⁶ Did no one take the trouble to see what this publication had said? Apparently not, since the application of a 1917-style approach was not confined to observers.

Pilots had always been allowed to wear their flying badges on completion of their training, of course, but, as FS 39 makes quite clear, by late 1918 completion of training meant a great deal more than it had a year before (see page 48). It now required attendance at appropriate role-associated courses covering applied flying and tactical skills which were taught at establishments such as a Fighting School, a School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping or the School for Marine Operational Pilots. Yet the revised pilot training scheme which had been introduced in 1935 had awarded a pilot his badge on completion of only the basic instructional phase, at which point he would have accumulated a total of some eighty hours in the air.⁶⁷ Before he was certified as being fit for squadron service he had still to demonstrate that he possessed more advanced skills. Among those listed were: night and formation flying; aircraft operation at high all-up weights; the ability to fly a steady course, ie to maintain a compass heading, and flying at a constant height and speed for five minutes, as on a bombing run. As previously noted, however, there had been problems with implementing the 1935 scheme and it had proved impossible to provide all pilots with all of the training which they were supposed to receive.

In 1937, therefore, newly qualified pilots were still reaching the squadrons with very little experience of applied flying, but proudly wearing their ‘wings’, just as they had in 1917. Similarly, just as in 1917, observers were obliged to earn their badges by completing a period of probationary service. In effect the Air Council had succeeded in setting the clock back by twenty years; it was as if the reforms of 1918 had never happened.

________________________

¹      The regulations for the trade testing of air gunners were later spelled out in detail in AP1112, Extracts from King’s Regulations and Air Council Instructions affecting Promotion, Mustering and Trade Tests of Airmen.

²      AIR2/560. A lengthy memorandum, dated 21 August 1933, explains the problems that had been encountered in defining the observer scheme, describes the compromises that had had to be made and provides an Air Force-wide impression of the anticipated distribution of these men.

³      Ibid. Figures from a minute dated 29 August 1933 raised by W Stevens of S.7. £40,000 would have represented an increase of about 0·24% on a typical contemporary Air Force Vote which, in the pre-Expansion era, tended to run at about £17M per annum.

⁴      AMO A.196/1934 of 9 August (re)introduced the trade of the air observer. The quotation in the opening paragraph of this chapter is taken from the preamble to this Order.

⁵      AMO A.195/1934 of 9 August introduced a new class of boy entrants who were to be employed within Trade Group II as armourers, wireless operators and photographers. The first intake, of 250, reported to the RAF Reception Depot at West Drayton on 12 October 1934.

⁶      Eastchurch had been the RAF’s centre for gunnery and all other aspects of basic and advanced armament training since WW I. The resident unit had had its name changed several times (see Chapter 15, Note 23) but it had been operating as the Air Armament School (AAS) since 1932. It moved to Manby in 1938 where (known by now as No 1 AAS – see Note 21) it focused increasingly on specialist and post-graduate armament training until, having become the Empire Air Armament School in 1944, it was merged with the Empire Flying School on 31 July 1949 to become an element of the newly formed RAF Flying College.

⁷      An early increase in throughput, to 80 per annum, was anticipated but even at that rate it would still take almost six years to produce the notional 453 observers that were required, not allowing for the need to replace wastage.

⁸      AMO A. 144/1935 of 13 June.

⁹      AMO A.54/1935 of 14 March.

¹⁰    AMO A. 11/1936 of 16 January.

¹¹    AIR16/246. Letter 342188/34 dated 20 December 1935 from AVM Bowhill as AMP to CinC ADGB, Air Mshl Sir John Steel.

¹²    AMO A. 11/1936 of 16 January.

¹³    AIR16/246. HQ Fighting Area letter dated 11 March 1936 from AVM Joubert to AMP, Air Mshl Sir Frederick Bowhill.

¹⁴    Ibid. HQ Western Area letter WA/3701/P3 dated 28 February 1936 from AVM Playfair to AMP.

¹⁵    AIR5/1346 contains a copy of the 1931-32 edition of this scheme.

¹⁶    AIR16/246. HQ Central Area letter CENA/OTB/1 dated 6 March 1936 from Boyd to CinC ADGB, Air Mshl Sir John Steel.

¹⁷    Ibid. Letter JMS/196 dated 9 March 1936 from Sir John Steel to Air Cdre Boyd.

¹⁸    Ibid. HQ Central Area letter CENA/OTB/1 dated 12 March 1936.

¹⁹    Ibid. Draft, dated 21 March 1936, of a letter from CinC ADGB to AMP. A note on the Minute Sheet indicates that Sir John Steel declined to send the letter.

²⁰    Ibid. HQ ADGB letter AD/22047/Air Tr dated 17 February 1936 from Sir John Steel to AMP. This was acknowledged by the Deputy Secretary of the Air Ministry, J S Ross, whose Air Ministry letter 489798/36/S7f of 4 March noted that the Air Council had decided to take no immediate action on the CinC’s recommendation.

²¹    On 1 November 1937, although its core function did not change, the Air Observers School was redesignated to become No 2 Air Armament School (AAS), the original unit at Eastchurch becoming No 1 AAS. Since its primary task was to produce observers, however, this title was evidently deemed to be inappropriate and on 1 March 1938 the unit at North Coates reverted to being an Air Observers School (AOS), but this time identified as No 1, in anticipation of the formation of a second, No 2 AOS eventually materialising at Acklington in the following November.

²²    AIR14/43. Bomber Command letter BC/4146/Trg dated 28 November 1936 from SASO to AOCs Nos 1, 2 and 3 Gps.

²³    Ibid. HQ 2 Gp letter 2BG/38/Air Trg dated 20 December 1936.

²⁴    Ibid. HQ 1 Gp letter 1BG/218/5/Air Trg dated 7 December 1936.

²⁵    Ibid. HQ 3 Gp letter 3BG/214/1/Ops dated 16 December 1936.

²⁶    AMO A.263/1936 of 12 November.

²⁷    AMO A.234/1938 of 30 June.

²⁸    AMO A.128/1936 of 4 June announced that no further full-time gunners would be trained and that the trade would cease to exist once all serving gunners had reverted to their original trades or left the Service. Pending the availability of sufficient observers, part-time gunners would be used to fill the remaining established full-time posts where necessary.

²⁹    AMO A. 11/1936 of 16 January.

³⁰    J R Paine, Getting Some In (1990), pp 36 & 42.

³¹    Originally located at Flowerdown, on 7 August 1929 the Electrical and Wireless School had moved to Cranwell where it continued to run the three-year apprenticeship scheme which produced WOMs, alongside a twelvemonth course (sixteen for boy entrants) that turned out straight Wireless Operators – WOps.

³²    C T Kimber, Son of Halton (1977), p163. Kimber became a Specialist Navigation Course graduate in 1941 and a year later, by then a squadron leader, he navigated the Liberator in which the Prime Minister was flown to and from Moscow via the Middle East. The security surrounding this mission was so tight that Kimber rarely knew his destination for each leg until he was at the aircraft! He was, therefore, unable to prepare a flight plan and, lacking appropriate charts for much of his (unknown) route, he had to make do with a hand-drawn navigational grid on which to plot his astro, supplementing this with a Phillips atlas. The expedition eventually covered some 15,000 nmls in 75 hours of flying time during which Kimber, working under unbelievable handicaps, had used 307 astro position lines to construct 102 fixes of which fifteen had been discarded.

³³    Correspondence with the author.

³⁴    Dennis Conroy, The Best of Luck (2003), p46. In 1941 Conroy became a pilot and, having trained in Southern Rhodesia, he flew Hurricanes and Typhoons with No 175 Sqn until, by then already commissioned, he became an Armament Officer in 1944.

³⁵    In just two years No 7 Sqn, for instance, operated Heyfords, Wellesleys, Whitleys, Ansons and Hampdens. Over a similar period No 15 Sqn progressed from Hinds through Battles to Blenheims, No 58 Sqn converted from Virginias to Whitleys via Ansons and Heyfords and No 115 Sqn flew Hendons, Harrows and Wellingtons.

³⁶    AMO A.328/1938 of 25 August drew specific attention to the use of the tail turret for measuring drift and stated that the technique would be taught in future basic training courses, although it was acknowledged that it could not actually be practised because none of the obsolete aeroplanes available to the various schools were fitted with turrets.

³⁷    AIR14/298. These deficiencies were listed in Bomber Command’s Readiness for War Report as at December 1938, covered by Air Chf Mshl Ludlow-Hewitt’s BC/S.12724/CinC dated 11 March 1939.

³⁸    AIR14/53. Harris to HQ Bomber Command, 12/Air dated 12 January 1938.

³⁹    J R Paine, op cit, p60. The model in use at the time would have been the Course Setting Bomb Sight Mk VII or VIII. The Mk IX was calibrated for higher speeds but it was not developed until 1937 and did not begin to enter large scale service until 1939.

⁴⁰    As a case in point, consider No 45 Sqn in 1938. The last of its three experienced flight lieutenant Flight Commanders was posted elsewhere in May. All of the remaining pilots, apart from the squadron leader CO, were first tourists. In October, in order to restore some semblance of a hierarchy, the most senior man, a flying officer, was given an acting flight lieutenancy and two of the pilot officers were made up to acting flying officer. These three then assumed the full responsibilities of Flight Commanders; they were still filling these posts when war was declared. This particular unit happened to have been stationed in Egypt at the time but much the same circumstances prevailed on squadrons based in the UK. These details are drawn from the author’s history of No 45 Sqn, The Flying Camels (1995).

⁴¹    AMO A. 135/1935 of 4 June.

⁴²    Five commercial schools had originally been contracted in 1923-24 to provide annual continuity flying for pilots of the RAF Reserve, ie qualified pilots who had served on short service engagements involving a subsequent reserve commitment, plus low rate (initially a total of up to fifty per annum) ab initio instruction for reservists. The school operated by Beardmores at Renfrew dropped out of the scheme in 1928. The four which were still in commission in 1935 were being run by De Havillands at Hatfield, Bristols at Filton, North Sea Aerial & General Transport (a subsidiary of Blackburns) at Brough and Air Service Training at Hamble.

⁴³    Since this was in June, which contains the longest days of the year, one wonders whether this really was ‘night’ flying, in the sense of its being done in the dark, as distinct from flying after normal working hours. In point of fact, this may not actually have mattered all that much, because completion of the night flying test was not mandatory in any case. KR 811, which laid down the requirements for a pilot to qualify for his flying badge, accepted that the night flying test was ‘applicable only when unit facilities permit.’

⁴⁴    The RAF’s first Link trainer was delivered to the CFS at Upavon on 8 September 1937.

⁴⁵    AIR8/204. Expansion Scheme F.

⁴⁶    In the course of design development the twin-engined HP 56 would morph into the four-engined Halifax.

⁴⁷    F C Richardson, Man Is Not Lost (1997), p133. Along with a few others, ‘Dickie’ Richardson was to become convinced that, if the RAF was to be effective, it was absolutely essential that it abandon its bad old ways and recognise the crucial importance of navigation.

⁴⁸    Ibid, p40.

⁴⁹    AIR2/2860. Unreferenced paper dated 31 August 1936 on Air Ministry file S.47629. David Waghorn was one of four officers to graduate from a Specialist Navigation Course (the sixteenth) in April 1936. One had been posted to HQ 3 Gp, the other three had been sent to recently opened flying training schools, Waghorn to No 10 FTS at Ternhill.

⁵⁰    It is not clear to which particular enterprise Waghorn was referring but he was not strictly correct in his contention. For example, Flt Lts L E M Gillman and P H Mackworth had participated in the RAF’s original expedition to the Cape in 1926, Flt Lt P E Maitland had taken part in the extraordinary achievement of the Southampton-equipped Far East Flight in 1927-28 and Flt Lts Gillman (again), Mackworth (again) and N H D’Aeth had all been involved in the RAF’s, ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to capture the World’s Long Distance Record using Horsleys in 1927.

⁵¹    It may be a coincidence, of course, but it may also not be entirely without significance that both Darley and Garrod had begun their flying careers as observers during WW I. Perhaps it had been this experience which had given them the broader and more tolerant outlook which had allowed them to endorse Waghorn’s outspoken paper, thus preventing its being ‘spiked’ by some impatient (pilot) staff officer as it negotiated the many chicanes within the chain of command.

⁵²    AIR2/2860. Memorandum, concerning the state of navigation within the RAF, dated 3 November 1936 on Air Ministry file S.47629, from Harris, as Deputy Director of Plans, to the Director of Staff Duties (Air Cdre W S Douglas) and the Director of Training (Gp Capt R Leckie).

⁵³    Sqn Ldr Arthur Harris had been a student on the only course run by the original School of Air Pilotage at Andover in 1919. With an aggregate mark of 88·8%, he had graduated top of a class of sixteen. Prior to assuming command of No 210 Sqn in April 1933, Wg Cdr Harris had also spent six months at Calshot being converted onto flying boats, a substantial element of this course also being devoted to navigation.

⁵⁴    AIR16/246. Letter AD/13547/Air Amt dated 13 November 1933 from CinC ADGB (Air Mshl Brooke-Popham) to the Air Ministry. AMP’s (AVM Bowhill) reply was dated 21 November.

⁵⁵    AIR2/2660. Minutes of a meeting held at the Air Ministry on 2 February 1937 to review the composition of crews. These were circulated under cover of S.40289 dated 23 February.

⁵⁶    AIR14/43. Air Ministry letter 638478/37/TW1 dated 3 May from Air Cdre W S Douglas to AOCinCs Coastal, Bomber and Fighter Commands.

⁵⁷    Kimber, op cit, p178. Interestingly, having begun flying as a locally-trained air gunner less than a year before, Kimber had already logged 190 hours of airborne time before he began his formal observers course.

⁵⁸    Steps had been taken to increase Manston’s training capacity as early as 1936 when No 48 Sqn had moved in with, what eventually became, a large fleet of Ansons (the establishment permitted as many as eighty) to operate in support of the newly formed SAN. Since this had already been done, however, there was no room for further expansion when the first ten-week ‘sn’ course, No 34, began on 12 January 1937.

⁵⁹    AMO A.1/1936 of 2 January had permitted, as a temporary measure, pilots holding a 2nd Class Civil Air Navigators Licence to fill appointments as Squadron Navigation Officers. It was not uncommon for an RAF pilot serving on a short service commission to obtain a civil licence as an investment against the second phase of his career, which was likely to be in commercial aviation.

⁶⁰    The contracts were let to the Imperial School of Air Navigation at Notting Hill, London (which moved to Shoreham in 1938 to become Martin’s School of Air Navigation) and a school run by Air Service Training at Hamble.

⁶¹    AIR2/2660. See Note 55.

⁶²    AMO A.347/1937 of 21 October.

⁶³    AMO A.90/1938 of 10 March.

⁶⁴    AMO A.99/1936 of 7 May promulgated the revised qualification standards which were to be associated with the pilot training scheme announced by AMO A.135/1935, although this had yet to be fully implemented, as circumstances still precluded the introduction of the full nine-month course.

⁶⁵    H A Jones, The War in the Air, Vol V (1935).

⁶⁶    FS 39, Training Courses in the RAF for Commissioned and Noncommissioned Personnel, showing Status and Pay. See Figure 18 on page 124 and Chapter 14, Note 22 for an indication of the content of this document (with respect to observers). At least one copy, quite possibly the one now held in The National Archives, would surely have been available in the Air Ministry library in the 1930s.

⁶⁷    AMO A.27/1936 of 13 February stated that the flying badge would be awarded at the end of the first term of training at an FTS. Subsequent refinement of the regulations removed references to the stage of training but retained the requirement for ‘not less than 80 hour’s solo and dual flying’. In practice, the award of ‘wings’ was later postponed to the end of the course at, what became known in wartime as, a Service Flying Training School (SFTS). By the summer of 1940 a student could expect to have logged about 120 hours by this stage and this would later be raised (by the New Deal proposals of late 1941 – see Chapter 22) to something over 200. While 200 is undeniably ‘not less than 80’ it is still a little surprising to observe that the 80 hours minimum was still being specified in Kings Regulations (at KR 811) published as late as 1944.