1938. The demand for additional aircrew obliges the RAF to resort to the direct recruiting of Observers.
As early as January 1936 it had been calculated that 1,264 trained observers would be needed to meet the demands of Expansion Scheme F.1 Since the planned output from North Coates was only 200 per year, simple arithmetic showed that it would be well into 1942 before that target could be met. Unfortunately, Scheme F was supposed to be complete by the end of March 1939. The prospects of success had been considerably improved in February 1937 when it had been decided to replace the observer in many of Bomber Command’s aeroplanes with a second pilot. Even so, the RAF would need to double its output of observers and at an Expansion Progress Meeting2 in November 1937 AMP, Air Mshl W G S Mitchell, presented the Air Council with two possible ways of achieving this aim. One involved contracting Air Service Training of Hamble to run navigation courses for an additional 200 internally recruited observers per year, their subsequent training in bombing and gunnery to be undertaken by Service schools. The alternative option was far more radical. It proposed the direct recruiting of civilians to be trained as observers.3
So far as the first idea was concerned, AMP pointed out that it might be difficult to find an annual total of 400 airmen who wanted to fly and who were eligible for selection. Furthermore, there was a growing sense of unease over the viability of the concept of the part-time aviator. The technical demands associated with modern aeroplanes were making it both unreasonable and unrealistic to expect part-timers to be able to cope with the complexities of power-operated gun turrets while having to keep pace with corresponding advances being made within their original trades.
The aeroplanes being introduced into service in the later 1930s brought with them complicated electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic systems to operate flaps, gun turrets, retractable undercarriages and the like, metal stressed-skin construction, valved radios, variable-pitch propellers, automatic pilots and so on. All of these required new servicing techniques and a good deal more maintenance than the relatively simple airframes, systems and devices to which the Service had been accustomed since 1918. The additional demands being placed on groundcrew inevitably made it increasingly difficult to release them to go flying. It followed that, since an airman clearly could not be in two places at once, a difficult peacetime situation would become quite unworkable in the event of war. Having effectively (or perhaps ineffectively) been getting two men for the price of one for almost twenty years, the RAF was finally being forced to come to terms with the fundamental lack of realism which had underpinned its post-war aircrew policy.
J R Paine, who passed through North Coates in 1937 before joining No 139 Sqn as an observer, provides a succinct first-hand impression of what this all meant in practice:4
‘For example, an Air Observer (Fitter) would be told to change the engine on an Aircraft. When he informed the Flight Sergeant that he was to go on a six hour flight, the answer would be, ‘Ho! Cpl, scrounging off flying Eh?, right, you can work all night on it when you come back!’
North Coates might be regarded as the spiritual home of the second generation of air observers, at least to begin with. This picture dates from 1931 when the station was one of three unnumbered RAF Practice Camps; with effect from 1 January 1932 it was redesignated to become No 2 Armament Practice Camp. (P H T Green)
A month after AMP had drawn attention to the problems involved in the provision of observers CAS, Air Chf Mshl Sir Cyril Newall, made his decision. Having accepted that it would be impractical to persist in trying to find the numbers required from within the Service, he directed that, in order to avoid creating serious undermanning problems within critical ground trades, civilian recruiting was to be introduced with the aim of completely satisfying the demand for observers by 1940.5
In effect the RAF had conceded that it would have to find sufficient civilians to provide 50% of the observers that it needed. Direct recruiting was a considerable departure from previous practice and it was being introduced on the understanding that it was to be a purely ‘temporary measure’. The direct entrants were being offered an engagement of only four years, simply to tide the Air Force over until the completion of its expansion programme(s) had provided it with sufficient manpower to allow it to resume 100% internal recruiting. It was hoped eventually to salvage most of the civilian entry by retraining them as airmen pilots in their fourth year of service.
While internal recruits would continue to be part-timers, those brought in from outside were going to be treated as full-time aircrew. This was more or less inevitable, since they were unlikely to have any other skills and there was no time to provide them with any. Nevertheless, despite their limited utility and their lack of experience, the civilian recruits, like their Service counterparts, were going to fly as corporals. This rather startling development provides an interesting commentary on the way in which the RAF was being obliged to change its attitudes, as well as its equipment, during the last years of peace.
While the Air Council had expressed some misgivings over the introduction of ‘instant’ corporal observers, it goes almost without saying that it had had less difficulty with the idea of ‘instant’ sergeant pilots. As early as 1935 it had been announced that, in order to obtain the numbers required, it would be necessary to resort to the direct recruiting of airmen pilots on short (four-year) engagements.6 The first of these had begun to enter productive service, as sergeants, in May of the following year – at more or less the same time as the RAF had been concluding that it would be quite unthinkable to permit an observer to wear even two stripes until he had been in uniform for at least six years (see page 146).
It should be noted, incidentally, that the introduction of directly recruited pilots had not met with universal approval. Since all airmen pilots had previously been drawn from within the ranks, the opportunity to obtain accelerated promotion to sergeant which this entailed had come to be seen as an integral element of the non-commissioned career structure. The fact that civilians were now perceived to be taking up some of these places was resented by regular airmen. Fortunately, the employment of direct entrant pilots had always been seen as a short-term measure and, not least because of their unpopularity, recruiting was terminated in the spring of 1937.
Meanwhile, in order to sustain the flow of volunteer observers from within the Service, yet more concessions needed to be made or, as some might have put it, the entry standard had to be lowered even further. In March 1938 the regulations governing the wearing of the flying ‘O’ were amended to exempt the remaining full-time gunners from having to attend a formal course at North Coates.7 In effect, therefore, a full-time gunner could become an observer by the simple expedient of arranging for his Flight Commander to authorise him to fly as one for six months and then persuading his CO to recommend him for remustering. Unless the individual concerned was a hopeless incompetent, most COs would probably have been only too happy to oblige, as this would have filled an empty slot in his unit’s establishment with a hard-to-find observer, whereas gunners, who could still be trained locally, were relatively easy to replace.
In another move to relieve the persistent shortage of observers the selection field of trades from which they could be drawn was further broadened in May 1938, the requirement for previous service being reduced at the same time to just three years.8 Despite these initiatives, the manning situation was getting worse. Although the pressure had been taken off in February 1937, this relief turned out to be only temporary, as it was recommended in May 1938 that the ‘no (strictly speaking, very few) observers’ policy should be reversed (see page 172).
By that time the training staffs were aiming at manpower targets set by Scheme L, which envisaged a striking force of forty-seven squadrons of heavy, and twenty-six of medium, bombers flying a total of 1,352 front-line aircraft.9 While some non-pilot aircrew would also be needed by Coastal and the various overseas Commands, the major employer was clearly still going to be Bomber Command. Including reserves, the overall bill came to 2,069 observers, 3,867 wireless operator/air gunners and 554 gunners without any wireless training – 6,490 men in all.10 It was a tall order.
In this context, the international situation was deteriorating so seriously in the summer of 1938 that AOCinC Bomber Command felt obliged to write to the Air Ministry to ensure that the government was, ‘fully informed of the existing deficiencies which could affect the ability of the force under my command to carry out the tasks allotted to it in the event of war.’ At fifty-five squadrons, Bomber Command’s front line strength was quite impressive, but, apart from the fact that many squadrons were still flying outdated aeroplanes, shortages of trained manpower reduced the effective strength by more than 50%, thus:11
Action was already in hand to remedy this situation, of course, the recruiting of direct entrant observers, which had been approved in December 1937, having actually begun in the following July.12 But it would take many more months to balance the books and an awareness of Bomber Command’s state of unpreparedness, among other military deficiencies, may well have been a factor leading to Neville Chamberlain’s signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938.
The arrangements to provide the additional observers involved four Civil Air Navigation Schools (CANS) which were contracted to provide the direct entrants with twelve weeks’ instruction in navigation. The first thirty-strong (sixty from January 1939) intakes began on 18 August.13 On completion of this phase, and still wearing their civilian clothes, trainees reported to one of the two RAF Recruit Depots for a fortnight’s military induction during which they were issued with their uniforms.14 From there they proceeded to a Service-run Air Observers School where they were given three weeks’ instruction in bombing, another three in gunnery and a further six weeks of navigation training. The first direct entrants were initially expected to reach the squadrons in February 1939.
The new scheme succeeded in attracting substantial numbers of potential observers, the increased civilian intake eventually requiring the commissioning of several more commercially operated navigation schools. To cope with the instruction of larger intakes of serving airmen and the armament training of the direct entrants, the Service training system also had to be considerably expanded. A second Air Observers School had opened before the end of 1938 and two more followed in the spring of 1939. All of these additional Service units were created by the simple expedient of adding instruction in navigation to the syllabus of selected existing Armament Training Stations and redesignating them.15
The introduction of direct entrant aircrew had made it necessary to revise the system of allowances. While under training, observer recruits were to be paid as leading aircraftmen (LAC) of Trade Group II plus flying instructional pay at 1/6d per day. On qualification they were to graduate as corporals (on probation for the first twelve months), drawing the inclusive nine-shilling daily rate that had been introduced in November 1936.
Meanwhile, probably because no one cared very much about them, a number of air gunners had been rather poorly treated because of the 1926 regulation requiring them to be filling established posts in order to draw crew and duty pay. When gunners began to attend courses at North Coates, most of them did so on attachment from squadrons to which they eventually returned as observers. Since they had never been struck off the books of their original units, therefore, they continued to draw crew and duty pay until they remustered. Unfortunately, those who had been posted to the Air Observers School were no longer actually filling gunner posts, which cost them 1/6d a day.
This anomaly was eventually removed in November 1938 when it was ruled that any gunner previously entitled to draw crew pay and gunners pay would continue to do so while under training as an observer, regardless of whether he was or was not filling an established post.16 This arrangement was to be short-lived, however, as the system was changed again in December. To bring them in line with direct entrants, it was decided that all Service personnel undergoing observer training should, like them, draw flying instructional pay at 1/6d per day. This 1/6d was a bonus to those airmen who were new to the flying game and compensated qualified gunners who were being retrained, all of whom now forfeited their 1/6d crew and gunners qualification pay.17 Needless to say, flying instructional pay for pilots was still being paid at a preferential rate of two shillings per day.
The Anson served as a trainer for non-pilot aircrew from 1938 to 1958. This early Mk I, L7956, was photographed in late 1938 when it was on the strength of No 3 Civil Air Navigation School which operated from Desford under the management of Reid and Sigrist. (CRO RAF Finningley)
1938-39. The introduction of non-pilot volunteer reserve aircrew.
The RAF Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) had been set up on 27 August 1936 with the aim of creating a large pool of part-trained personnel who could be called out in the event of an emergency.18 Recruiting began in January 1937. In terms of aircrew this was initially confined to airmen pilots, although provision was made for (reserve) commissions to be awarded to suitable candidates above the age of 21 years (medical and equipment officers were also required). The RAFVR resembled the Territorial Army, at least to the extent that it was organised on a regional basis, a ground training centre (the first of which opened in March 1937) being located within a town or city with flying being conducted from a nearby aerodrome.
The nucleus of these arrangements was provided by the thirteen civil schools which had already been contracted to support the elementary stage of the 1935 pilot training scheme (see page 152). RAFVR flying training began in April 1937 and in July financial approval was obtained to engage a further ten civil schools. In December all of these units were given quasi-military status by centralising their administration within Training Command and numbering them as Elementary and Reserve Flying Training Schools (ERFTS).19
Once the RAF had decided to resort to the direct recruiting of regular observers, it followed that, like regular pilots, they too would need to be backed up by reservists. Recruiting of non-pilot RAFVR aircrew, gunners as well as observers, began in November 1938, initially at Glasgow, Coventry and Leicester.20 The response was generally disappointing; by the end of March 1939 only 237 observers and 124 wireless operator/air gunners had enlisted. Furthermore, little real progress had been made with training.
In fact, training was proving to be somewhat problematic. The only subjects that the few available instructors could realistically be expected to deal with were those academic aspects of navigation and wireless telegraphy which could be taught in the classroom at a town centre. There were no suitable aeroplanes available for air work and, even if there had been, the (still essentially civil) ERFTSs could hardly have been expected to offer much in the way of practical gunnery or bombing.
Furthermore, there was a critical shortage of staff. To take just one example, only thirty-three of the 174 instructors required to teach armaments were immediately available. Steps were promptly taken to engage and train suitable instructors, the first batch of thirty embarking on a fourteen-week course at Manby in December 1938. Even so, it was expected to be March 1940 before all of the necessary instructors would be in place. There were similar problems in finding staff to deal with photography, navigation and wireless, the total requirement for instructors of all kinds amounting to some 625 men.
In the wake of the Munich crisis increased urgency was attached to the provision of fully trained reserves and a scheme was introduced which offered a £50 bounty (about £2,750 in 201221) to RAFVR personnel who were prepared to undertake six months of full time training. This was to take them as far as spending a period of quasi-operational flying with a non-mobilisable squadron.22
There was some uptake, 120 pilots having taken advantage of the offer by May 1939. Unfortunately, the limitations of the training facilities meant that there were no aircrew of any other categories to support them. Furthermore, there had been considerable reservations over the wisdom of extending this element of the reserve scheme to embrace observers, as it was felt that the offer of what amounted to a six-month trial with a substantial bounty would act as a disincentive to signing on as a regular.23 Nevertheless, in the spring of 1939 the proprietors of the Civil Air Navigation Schools were being pressed to accept VR observers with a view to providing them with much the same training as was being given to direct entrant regulars. A major problem with this approach was that, without an increase in overall capacity, reservists could be trained only at the expense of regulars. This was equally true in the case of pilots, of course.
On 1 May 1939 the RAFVR had 3,604 pilots on its books, 89% of the (then) overall requirement of 4,050. While very few of these men could be regarded as being anything like fully trained, the overall position was generally satisfactory, but this was not the case with non-pilots. The number of observers enrolled had crept up to 477 and there were now 313 air gunners, but these represented only 18% of the combined target figure of 4,300.24 This sort of head counting went on continually, of course, but the numbers had taken on a grimly increased significance since March, when Hitler had brushed aside the Munich Agreement to occupy what was left of Czechoslovakia; there were early indications that Poland might be next.
Some progress was made in April, when the civil schools at Prestwick, Ansty and Desford each agreed (in principle) to accept a batch of twenty-four VR observers. Although this arrangement was referred to as ‘full time’ training, by the time that the military stage had been added, it was actually expected to take a year to complete. This was twice as long as the sequence of courses for regulars and meant that the first fully trained RAFVR observers would not become available until as late as April 1940. Even this was an optimistic forecast, however, as contractual terms had still to be agreed with the commercial navigation schools at the end of May.
By July there were 180 pilots at a variety of ERFTSs committed to voluntary six-month ‘full time’ courses, but the whole scheme was on too small a scale and was going to take far too long to produce results. The solution to this problem was expected to lie in the passage of the Military Training Act of May 1939 which had been hastily introduced as a reaction to the German occupation of Prague.25 Under its provisions, the Air Ministry was able to call up reservists on initial enlistment for up to six months of real full time training followed by three and a half years as a ‘weekend warrior’ with the RAFVR. The necessary plans began to be prepared in May, the associated regulations being promulgated two months later.26 It would take many more weeks for these arrangements to be implemented, however, because new contracts had first to be negotiated with the civil schools. They then needed to prepare additional facilities and accommodation, and recruit and engage the necessary extra staff. Only when all of that had been done could training actually begin.
Although certain young men were required to register under the terms of the Military Training Act, they were at little risk of being called up in the short term, as there was insufficient training capacity. Nevertheless, boosted by some conscription, the RAFVR continued to attract a steady flow of voluntary applicants (by now including ground tradesmen), although, because the July regulations had made full time training for reservists mandatory, there was no longer any need to provide a recruiting carrot, so the Treasury was able to save its £50 bounties. Regardless of rank and trade, all RAFVR trainees were to be paid 1/6d per day throughout their six-month stint, the only exceptions being aircrew who were to draw flying instructional pay at daily rates of 2/9d for pilots, 2/- for observers and 1/6d for W/T operators and/or air gunners. It is not known, incidentally, why trainee VR pilots and observers attracted, respectively, 9d and 6d per day more than their regular counterparts, while there was no corresponding increment for gunners.
It was eventually agreed that the first RAFVR observers, for what was sometimes informally referred to as the ‘militia air force’, would begin full-time training in September. They were to spend twelve weeks at a CANS followed by eight at an Armament Training Station (which was to be set up specifically for their benefit at Jurby), the sequence being finished off by an eight-week stint with a non-mobilisable squadron. The first wireless operators were to follow in October, their training involving eight weeks of gunnery at Acklington, followed by four months of wireless training at Hamble and a fortnight with a squadron. The first courses for pilots were expected to start in November.
Sadly, it was all too late. No one knew it at the time, of course, but when serious planning for the provision of six months of full time training for reservists had begun, less than four months of peace remained. As a result, the RAF was already committed to entering the war without an effective aircrew reserve. It was true that there were substantial numbers of pilots who could be called out, but less than a third of them could be regarded as being anything like fully trained.
Heavier aircraft, Harts and Audaxes, had been introduced at the ERFTSs in 1937/38 and since then pupils had been trained to something approaching the intermediate standard achieved at Service FTSs. Despite the issue of a handful of Battles in 1939, however, it had proved impossible to provide reservists with the more advanced elements of the full course and there had never been any realistic prospect of the ERFTSs providing armament training. The position with regard to non-pilots was even bleaker; the notional reserve was considerably understrength27 and those that had enrolled had received very little worthwhile instruction.28
Unfortunate as all of this was, there was another adverse factor at work which would not make itself apparent until later. Under constant pressure to increase the numbers of non-pilot reservists, the recruiting centres had tended to accept whatever applicants they could get. Needless to say, this was a very short-sighted approach, as the Service was to discover when these men began to be called out in September (see pages 199-200).
1938-39. The Observer is given exclusive responsibility for navigation.
A year after implementing the (February 1937) concept of using a second pilot to handle navigation, there had been little detectable improvement in the ability of bomber crews to find their way about. This will have been due, at least in part, to the disappointing results yielded by the use of civil schools to train Squadron Navigation Officers (see page 157). These schools were not obliged to provide any flying exercises so, while the men responsible for raising standards on squadrons may have acquired some academic expertise, they were little better at dealing with the practicalities of navigation than those whom they were supposed to be supervising.
Notionally a maritime reconnaissance unit, between January 1936 and September 1938 No 48 Sqn actually functioned as an adjunct to Manston’s School of Navigation with a large fleet of Ansons. (Aeroplane Monthly)
It is clear from this that, despite its having fluttered the dovecotes at the Air Ministry, one of the main thrusts of Flt Lt Waghorn’s paper of 1936 had failed to find its mark. Waghorn had stressed the vital importance of practical ‘hands on’ experience; the RAF’s response had been to provide only classroom instruction.
Since many Squadron Navigation Officers had proved to be unsatisfactory as teachers, it was eventually decided to abandon the concept.29 In its place all pilots were to be individually trained to ‘sn’ standard by sending them on a ten-week course (ideally) immediately after graduation. It had initially been assumed that the School of Air Navigation would handle this task but, when the sums were done, the anticipated throughput turned out to be no fewer than 1,500 trainees during 1938-39. To provide increased capacity at Manston, some of its commitments were transferred elsewhere but even so the imminent withdrawal of the facilities provided by No 48 Sqn meant that it could not possibly process such numbers alone and it was necessary to sustain the use of civil schools.30 The first course began at Manston in April 1938, two civil navigation schools accepting their first intakes of pilots in May. Four more civil organisations, diverted from observer training, were scheduled to join the programme in the summer but by that time changing priorities had already caused them to revert to their original tasks.
As a result of these initiatives, by January 1939 some tentative optimism began to be expressed over a perceived improvement in the attitudes of pilots towards navigation (although it does not follow that this would necessarily have been accompanied by any improvement in the standards of accuracy being achieved), as indicated by this extract from Bomber Command’s Annual Training Report for 1938:31
‘The history of the phenomenally slow progress made in the promotion within the Service of sound methods of air navigation warns us that, unless reactionary tendencies are recognised and properly counteracted, we shall be faced with equally great difficulties in raising the state of airmanship and crew training to a satisfactory operational standard. Resistance within units to the adoption of correct methods of navigation due to overconservatism and ignorance has now to a great extent been broken by:–
(a) improved training at flying training schools
(b) formation of navigation schools, and training of all young pilots at these schools
(c) senior officers’ courses
As AOCinC Bomber Command in 1939, Air Chf Mshl Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt found it difficult to accept the concept of observers being given responsibility for navigation, even more so when this involved direct entrant ‘instant’ sergeants – see page 177 & 182. But by 1943 he had become a staunch supporter of the navigator – see page 267.
Even now proper navigation habits are not yet instilled into all pilots, but considerable progress has been made and if the present efforts to promulgate and establish in the Service sound methods of navigation are sustained and pressed, the next twelve months should see the final adoption throughout the Command of habits of efficient and systematic procedure.’
By the spring of 1938, however, some quite influential officers had already begun to question the wisdom of devoting so much effort to training pilots in navigation. One of them was Philip Mackworth (see page 153), by now a wing commander, who considered that, once the anticipated war had actually started, time simply would not permit the luxury of providing all pilots with lengthy courses in both flying and navigation.32 He argued that the observer represented an underexploited resource and that a better solution would be to make him fully responsible for navigation. In May 1938 he presented his case at a policy meeting which eventually agreed to recommend that ‘the navigation of the aircraft in war should be carried out by a properly trained observer/navigator.’33
Making observers responsible for navigation in war would have two major implications. The first was that all observers would have to be taught the full ten-week ‘sn’ syllabus, previously confined to pilots. The second was that an observer would have to be added to the crews of all general (ie maritime) reconnaissance aircraft and to those of bombers which did not already have one, thus reinstating the observers who had been deleted from the crews of large bombers as recently as February 1937 (see page 156). This did not, however, displace the second pilots who had been introduced at that time.34
Mackworth had also argued that, since the observer would be better trained in future, it would be possible to reduce the navigation content of pilot training to basic DR. The meeting endorsed this idea but there was some uncertainty as to where and when this training ought to be provided. AVM W S Douglas, who chaired the meeting, was hopeful that it would be possible to shoehorn an adequate amount of pilot navigation into the existing FTS course and he directed that this possibility was to be investigated.
Until this matter could be settled, therefore, the current pilot training sequence (including the early post-graduate ten-week ‘sn’ course) had to remain undisturbed, and there was some justification for this. Since the May 1938 recommendation had made observers responsible for navigation only ‘in war’, pilots still retained this responsibility in peace. While this amounted to little more than sophistry, it served to block any changes within the pilot training sequence. In effect, therefore, the Service was now training three men to act as navigators in each large aeroplane and two in smaller ones.
Mackworth returned to the fray in February 1939 to point out that it was clearly an extravagance to be providing all of these men with the lengthy specialist instruction necessary to reach ‘sn’ standard.35 Furthermore, it had become apparent by now that the training system was quite incapable of handling the considerable numbers involved, so the aim was not actually being achieved in any case. Mackworth suggested that, since it had already been accepted that observers would have to be responsible for navigation in wartime, they might as well do it in peacetime as well. Despite its obvious logic, this proposal was to be bitterly opposed.
Back in 1917-18, Lt-Col Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt had been instrumental in having many of the key functions of first-generation observers transferred to pilots (see page 64). Twenty years later, by now Air Chf Mshl Sir Edgar and AOCinC Bomber Command, he was steadfastly opposed to their successors being given formal responsibility for navigation. His uncompromising attitude was clearly revealed in related correspondence in which he used phrases such as ‘the observer is the servant of the Captain of the Aircraft’ and ‘never state that he is responsible for navigation’ (L-H’s underlining).36 Ludlow-Hewitt’s chief concern was that if the observer were to be made responsible for it, the captain would ‘wash his hands of navigation.’ Unfortunately, although no one appears to have pointed this out, that is precisely what most pilots had been doing for the previous twenty years, which is why navigation was currently proving to be such a problem.
Ludlow-Hewitt was not having it all his own way, however, as a number of other prominent and increasingly influential officers had finally begun to appreciate the adverse consequences of the RAF’s peacetime crewing policy. As early as 1936, for instance, in commenting on the Waghorn Paper, Gp Capt Arthur Harris had identified the RAF’s traditional practice of ‘attempting to make pilots masters of all trades so that they never have time to become masters of their own’ as the cause of many of the Service’s operational shortcomings.37
Harris was not alone. There were other senior officers who would later come to share his appreciation of the situation. For example, in December 1938 Air Mshl Mitchell wrote that ‘the assumption that lay behind the previous policy, that the observer need not be of the same high standard as the pilot, should be finally abandoned’ and that ‘it is clear that the observer is of, at least, equal importance and it is accordingly proposed that both as regards pay and status he should be placed on an equal footing with the airman pilot.’ In conclusion, Mitchell even went so far as to advocate the creation of a class of commissioned observers.38
A year later AVM Douglas (an erstwhile back-seater himself) was to state that, in his view, the lack of faith in the early observers of WW II was because ‘the prestige of pilots has been so extensively fostered in the past that there has been a tendency to belittle the importance of other members of the crew.’ Douglas went on to point out that, while many pilots were opposed to the idea of observers being made responsible for navigation, ‘some pilots themselves have not shown themselves very keen to become expert navigators’39 – which seriously undermined both the optimistic views that Ludlow-Hewitt had expressed in January 1939, in his Command’s Annual Training Report for 1938, and his impassioned protest to AMP of a month later (see above).
Despite Bomber Command’s objections, in May 1939 it was finally ruled that observers would be responsible, albeit ‘under the direction of the captain’, for aircraft navigation in both peace and war.40
This change in policy would have a significant impact on course locations, sizes, lengths and phasing.41 In future, pilots were to receive the first four weeks of the ten-week navigation syllabus while at an FTS with the remaining six weeks being provided at the SAN at Manston via a (suitably truncated) ‘sn’ Course. The stated aim was to provide pilots with sufficient knowledge to be able to get their aeroplanes back to base in an emergency and to permit them to monitor the observer’s efforts. Occasional six-week ‘sn’-style Courses were to be devoted exclusively to wing commanders and squadron leaders, with the content adapted as necessary, in order to provide them with sufficient advanced instruction to permit them to supervise the conduct of continuation training within their units. Little progress was made with this programme, however, as the first six-week ‘sn’ Course for pilots was not scheduled to begin until as late as August 1939. In the event none had actually started before the outbreak of war put a stop to the programme.
As to observers, they too were to be unaffected by the change in policy in the short term. For them the change was not going to be introduced until as late as April 1940 after which all observers were to be trained at the School of Air Navigation via a twelve-week ‘sn’ course, the extra fortnight being added to include reconnaissance and photography. The forecast throughput was to be at a rate of 240 per year.42 No longer involved in observer training, from April 1940 the CANSs were to be diverted to the provision of the six-week pilots top-up courses displaced from Manston by the observers. The civil contracts were all due to terminate in 1941, however, by which time it was hoped to be able to provide exclusively Service-run navigation training.
All of these plans were, of course, overtaken by events.
1938. The part-time aircrew concept is finally abandoned.
As noted above, the recommendation of May 1938, which would make them responsible for navigation in war, would also add a, still part-time, observer to the complement of every crew. This had provoked further consideration of the conditions governing the provision of non-pilot aircrew. Air Chf Mshl Ludlow-Hewitt had very strong views on this subject because, having recognised that teamwork was going to be essential for the efficient operation of large, multi-seat aeroplanes, he had inevitably been drawn to the conclusion that his bombers needed to have permanently constituted crews.43
While some progress was made in this context, this policy was not fully implemented until after the declaration of war, although the Air Force had already been drifting in this direction for some time. For instance, as early as mid-1937, the Records Office had called for periodic returns of airmen who flew regularly as wireless operators and/or gunners.44 The object of this exercise was to limit their movements so that they could remain with their units for as long as possible. While the concept of constituted crews would clearly impose significant constraints on the staffs responsible for posting part-timers, the problems did not end there. If the idea was really going to work, all of the members of a crew would have to be available at the same time so that they could be programmed for continuation training, on the ground as well as in the air. At squadron level, this simply could not be achieved if most of the crew were part-timers subject to the whims of two masters.
By 1938 ‘the days of releasing the odd airmen for an hour or so to loose off a few rounds from the rear cockpit of a Hind were over.’ This one, K6741, clearly belonged to No 50 Sqn.
Furthermore, the performance and complexity of modern aeroplanes made increasing demands on the crew in that, apart from flights being of longer duration, flight planning, pre-flight checks and post-flight debriefs all required far more time than in the past. The days of releasing the odd airman for an hour or so to loose off a few rounds from the rear cockpit of a Hind were over. Each of the new Whitleys required an observer and two wireless operator/gunners, and probably a third gunner under training. If a squadron were required to put up, say, ten aircraft for an exercise (let alone in war) this would effectively remove as many as forty airmen from the hangar for a whole day. Such a depletion of technical personnel would plainly be unacceptable.
Having been considering this problem for some time, by the summer of 1938 Ludlow-Hewitt had devised a specific proposal for a discrete aircrew trade.45 He envisaged that their initial training would provide an introduction to navigation, gunnery, bomb aiming, photography and wireless operation. They would all be employed as gunners initially, progressively adding formal qualifications in other skills as they gained in experience. His aim was that every member of a crew should eventually be capable of carrying out any function apart from flying the aeroplane, which was to be the exclusive preserve of pilots. On the other hand, pilots were expected to be able to carry out the duties of all other crew members, as well as their own!
If this seems a trifle ambitious, it is because it was. It will be recalled (see page 64) that in 1917 Ludlow-Hewitt had tended to assume that all pilots were as capable as he undoubtedly was himself.46 Unfortunately, this simply was not the case. Given several years of training and experience, it is possible that a few individuals might have been able to meet Ludlow-Hewitt’s exacting standards, but to expect that all of the pilots serving in a largely conscripted citizen air force would all be capable of performing competently in any of the crew stations in a large bomber was plainly unrealistic. The likelihood of this ideal ever being attained by anyone became even more remote when the constraints of the anticipated war were imposed on the concept. It had to be expected that training would be reduced to a minimum in wartime and the inevitable losses in action were likely to preclude all but a lucky few from accumulating very much experience.
Note on terminology.
Up to this point in this narrative the term aircrew has been used to refer to aviators of all kinds, because it is both convenient and, today, familiar. This has actually been an anachronism, since an air force accustomed to thinking in terms only of pilots, all other aviators being merely misemployed ground personnel, had little use for such a label before 1938. Once the Service had begun to recruit and employ non-pilots as full-time professional flyers, however, the term did begin to enter the RAF’s lexicon. At the time it was rendered as two words – air crew – and, although there were some deviations from this practice, it generally stayed that way until 1945-46.
At first ‘air crew’ was associated only with non-pilots but its meaning was gradually extended and in 1940 it was officially declared to be a generic term applicable ‘to all members of the flying crews of an aircraft.’47 These conventions will be followed from here on, to reflect contemporary practice.
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1 AIR8/204. Expansion Scheme F.
2 From June 1935 onwards, Air Council Meetings were known as Secretary of State’s Progress Meetings on RAF Expansion Measures, or Expansion Progress Meetings (EPM) for short. The 200th EPM was held in July 1940 after which the original title was reinstated.
3 AIR6/51. Note 142(37) dated 15 November 1937 submitted to the 102nd EPM by AMP, Air Mshl W G S Mitchell.
4 J R Paine, op cit, p61.
5 This edict, which also directed that observers were to be trained in navigation to the same standard as pilots, was contained in a minute dated 13 December 1937 from CAS to AMP. The original was raised on Air Ministry file 519517/36, which appears to have been destroyed in 1954. This most significant minute is referred to in an AHB monograph (AIR41/4), a footnote stating that it is reproduced in full at Appendix 6. Unfortunately, in this instance, the appendices were contained within a separate volume and neither the AHB nor The National Archives appears to have retained a copy of this document.
6 AMO A.129/1935 of 23 May announced the introduction of ‘instant’ sergeant pilots, AMO 89/1936 of 23 April publishing their conditions of service.
7 AMO A.90/1938 of 10 March.
8 AMOs A.166/1938 and A.189/1938 of 5 and 26 May revised and restated the conditions governing the internal recruiting of air observers.
9 AIR8/237. Expansion Scheme L.
10 AIR6/55. Note 156(38) dated 29 October 1938 submitted to the 141st EPM by AMP, Air Mshl W G S Mitchell.
11 AIR14/179. Letter BC/S.21356/CinC dated 14 September 1938 from Air Chf Mshl Ludlow-Hewitt to Harold Balfour, the Under-Secretary of State for Air. Note that this was the day before the Prime Minister made the first of the three visits to Germany which culminated in the signing of the Munich Agreement on the 30th.
12 AMO A.253/1938 of 14 July laid down the conditions of service for direct entrant air observers.
13 The first four civil schools were run by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick, The Bristol Aeroplane Company at Yatesbury, Reid and Sigrist at Desford and Air Service Training at Ansty.
14 Since the 1920s, following a brief initial assessment and processing by the RAF Reception Depot at West Drayton, the RAF Depot at Uxbridge had provided the majority of civilians with their first exposure to the Service. The increased intakes associated with the Expansion Schemes had exceeded its capacity, however, so, to relieve the pressure, No 2 Recruit Depot was set up at Henlow in May 1937. The new unit moved to Cardington at the end of September, by which time Uxbridge had been restyled No 1 Recruit Depot.
15 The first cohort of direct entrant observers requiring armament training arrived at North Coates on 21 November 1938. By this time North Coates had become No 1 AOS, No 2 having been formed at Acklington on the 15th by redesignating No 7 Armament Training Station.
16 AMO A.407/1938 of 3 November.
17 AIR2/2968. Air Ministry letter S.45639/S.7 dated 12 December 1938 announced this change in policy.
18 AMO A.201/1936 of 27 August.
19 AMO N.55/1938 of 20 January announced that the headquarters of the Superintendent of Civil Flying Schools had been renamed HQ No 26 (Training) Group with effect from 1 December 1937 and that it was responsible for Nos 1-21 ERFTSs. Although it was not specifically stated, it seems reasonable to assume that the existing schools would also have been allocated their numerical designations on the same date (although No 21 ERFTS did not actually open until 1 January 1938 and some sources indicate that the numbers were not introduced until February).
20 AIR30/270. The legislative changes necessary to introduce non-pilot aircrew categories into the VR were given royal assent by King’s Order 368 of 20 December 1938.
22 Although new squadrons had continued to form in compliance with various Expansion Schemes, by 1939 several of them had to be classed as non-mobilisable because they were manned below establishment and the lack of trained reserves meant that they could not be brought up to strength, even in an emergency. On the outbreak of war there were nine such units in Bomber Command.
23 AIR6/55. Note EPM 174(38) dated 2 December 1938 submitted to the 146th EPM by AMP, Air Mshl W G S Mitchell.
24 AIR6/57. Note EPM 76(39) dated 1 May 1939 submitted by AMSO, AVM W L Welsh.
25 Passed by the Commons on 26 April 1939 and endorsed by the Lords the next day, the Reserve and Auxiliary Forces Act received royal assent on 25 May and the Military Training Act on the 26th.
26 AMO A.252/1939 of 5 July.
27 AIR41/65. On 1 September 1939 the RAFVR’s strength in observers stood at 1,623 and it had 1,948 wireless operators and gunners, still well below target in both cases, although the number of pilots had risen to 5,646. Of these, none of the rear crew had received a significant amount of training and only 1,702 of the pilots were regarded as being, at least notionally, fully qualified (see Chapter 15, Note 60).
28 In a history of No 15 ERFTS published in Flight for 19 March 1954, the author, C Nepean Bishop, records that the unit had included an aircrew (ie non-pilot) training flight since December 1938 but he also notes that, ‘unfortunately the six Avro Ansons with which they were to operate were held up for a time by lack of certain instruments, the first three only arriving in August 1939 very incompletely equipped.’ This was not an isolated instance.
29 AIR29/598. The last Short Navigation Course run with the specific aim of producing Squadron Navigation Officers, No 39 in a numerical sequence that had begun at Calshot and subsequently been sustained by Andover and Manston, ended on 27 May 1938.
30 The training of pilots destined for maritime squadrons was transferred from Manston to Thorney Island where a School of General Reconnaissance was opened on 4 April 1938 and in the following September No 48 Sqn moved to Eastchurch to take up its primary role.
31 AIR14/57. Bomber Command Annual Training Report 1938, BC/S.21581/TR dated 23 January1939.
32 Wg Cdr Mackworth was OR3 at the Air Ministry in 1938-39.
33 AIR2/2660. Minutes of a meeting held at the Air Ministry on 16 May 1938 under the chairmanship of ACAS, AVM W S Douglas, to discuss ‘Training And Establishments Of Air Observers In War.’
34 The Wellington is a case in point. Designed to Specification B.9/32, which had called for a four-man crew to include a pilot and a navigator (sic), it materialised with two pilots and an observer.
35 AIR2/4667. Unreferenced ‘Memorandum on Navigation Policy’ dated 22 February 1939 which was forwarded to AOCinC Bomber Command by ACAS, AVM Douglas the next day.
36 Ibid. Unreferenced letter of 27 February 1939 from Ludlow-Hewitt, responding to the memorandum at Note 35.
37 AIR2/2860. See Chapter 16, Note 52.
38 AIR6/55. Note EPM 156(38) dated 29 October 1938 submitted to the 141st EPM by AMP, Air Mshl W G S Mitchell.
39 AIR2/4459. Minute dated 29 December 1939 on Air Ministry file S.75988 from AVM Douglas to AMP, Air Mshl Portal, another (possibly sympathetic) ex-observer.
40 AIR2/4467. Letter S.47667/S.6 dated 22 May 1939 from Charles Evans (Principal Assistant Secretary to the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Air) to all Commands, except Maintenance Command. This letter provided broad details of the new policy for the conduct of, and training in, air navigation.
41 Ibid. The anticipated practical implications of this change in policy were spelled out in letter, S.47667/DofT dated 5 June 1939, signed by the Deputy Director of Training, Gp Capt A Gray
42 Prior to this, in order to satisfy the demands of Expansion Scheme L (see page 168), the system had been geared to producing more than 2,000 observers during 1939 (see page 182). The programme was expected to be complete by April 1940, however, and thereafter 240 per year was calculated to be sufficient to cater for wastage across the, still peacetime, front line.
43 AIR2/2968. It is clear from the terms in which his BC/S.21116/CinC of 14 July 1938 (see Note 45) was couched that Ludlow-Hewitt had recognised the need for constituted crews.
44 AMO A. 173/1937 of 3 June.
45 AIR2/2968. Ludlow-Hewitt provided a detailed breakdown of his proposal in a letter, BC/S.21116/CinC, which he addressed to the Air Ministry on 14 July 1938. This was certainly not the first time that he had raised the question of an aircrew trade, however, as is clear from his annual report on the efficiency of his Command for 1937 (BC/S.20890 of 19 March 1938 – AIR2/2961 – in which he refers to correspondence on this topic) which was dated as early as November of that year..
46 Testimony as to Ludlow-Hewitt’s early capabilities was provided by no less an authority than Maj James McCudden VC DSO* MC* MM who, as an NCO, flew as his observer before becoming a pilot himself. In his Flying Fury, p83, McCudden wrote that ‘having flown a good deal with Major Hewitt, I intensely disliked ever going up with anyone else, for I can assure you that I knew when I was flying with a safe pilot, and I now had so much faith in him that if he said ‘Come to Berlin,’ I should have gone like a shot.’
47 AMO A.94/1940 of 15 February.