Chapter 19

1939. The ultimate pre-war scheme for the provision of non-pilot air crew.

Despite Prime Minister Chamberlain’s declaration of ‘peace in our time’ in the wake of the Munich crisis of September 1938, there were few grounds for optimism and the rearmament programme continued apace. Meanwhile, the air staff had been working on Bomber Command’s idea of an air crew trade and proposals showing how it might be made to work were submitted in October.1 Presumably believing, or perhaps hoping, that it still had time in hand, the Air Council adopted the scheme. The last major change in recruiting and training policy to be implemented in peacetime, details were announced in January 1939.²

The explanatory remarks contained the crucial statement that ‘employment as a member of an aircraft crew will in future be regarded as full-time employment and airmen for such duties will be provided additionally to the tradesmen establishment of all units concerned.’ While this was seen as a major innovation, which indeed it was, it was not really breaking new ground. Having long since seen the light, the RN had adopted this practice as early as 1935 (see page 165).

The new RAF scheme introduced a progressive concept which envisaged that all non-pilot air crew would begin their careers as, what were now to be known as, wireless operators (air crew). The underlying intention was to phase out the previous distinction whereby some gunners had been wireless trained but others had not. With the exception of Coastal Command, where the peculiar demands of flying boats meant that fitters and riggers would continue to be employed on flying duties, all of the new generation of gunners were to be recruited from boy entrant wireless operators.³ Starting at 18 years of age, they would all fly as airmen for an initial period of three years. Most could then expect to continue to be employed as wireless operators (air crew) but about 25% were to be selected for further training. After a sixteen-week course of navigation and bombing these men would be remustered as air observers, at which point they were to become sergeants. It was envisaged that, following a further period of productive service, those observers who were considered suitable would ultimately become pilots.

Flying boats, like this Saro London, were equipped with what amounted to a mobile workshop and it was standard practice for the gunners to be riggers and fitters, rather than the wireless operators who predominated elsewhere. (Air Britain)

The majority of the volunteer air gunners of the inter-war years had always been wireless operators but from January 1939 this became policy. During the 1930s wireless operators were trained at Cranwell where the Electrical and Wireless School maintained a small fleet of aeroplanes to give trainees some air experience. Among them was this Victoria, K2344, which was there in 1933-35, primarily to carry out auto-pilot trials (hence the empty cockpit in this photograph). (R C Sturtivant)

Provision was made for observers to serve in ranks up to warrant officer with rates of pay being the same as for airmen pilots, which for a sergeant meant 12/6d per day. Another refinement was that the scheme also allowed for a proportion of observers (and gunners) to be commissioned, although there were no indications as to when this might occur or of the numbers that might be required.

The concept of commissioned observers engaged a number of senior personnel officers in the spring of 1939. Air Cdre P Babington noted that the only readily available mechanism for commissioning observers would be to retrain them as pilots, which, apart from being ‘a wasteful process’, would not actually achieve the aim. Furthermore (because they had been deleted in 1926 – see page 136), current unit establishments made no provision for observer officers so, before any could be commissioned it would be necessary to decide how many would be needed. Babington thought that it would be difficult to justify more than one per flight in peacetime, although he foresaw that this would be insufficient in war.⁴

AVM Portal (AMP since February 1939) had no doubts about the latter case and he promptly recommended that ‘our war establishments should provide the observer officer posts necessary to:

a. Give a reasonable career for observers up to, say, Squadron Leader.

b. Allow at least an officer observer to each airmen pilot.

c. Give the observer prestige comparable with that of the pilot.’ ⁵

Air Cdre D G Donald pointed out that, because of the numerical imbalance between pilots and observers, the second of AMP’s proposals was too crudely expressed. As it stood it could, under certain circumstances, work to the disadvantage of pilots (the implication being that it was axiomatic that such an outcome would be unacceptable). To avoid this it would be necessary to make more subtle calculations. By mid-May 1939 Donald’s staff was actively working out ‘in detail the number of ranks of officer observers who can be included in our war establishments.’⁶ While the sums may well have been done, it is doubtful whether any early amendments to establishments were ever published and it would certainly be another year before any observers were actually commissioned (see page 189).

Leaving aside the specific problem of commissions, while the January 1939 air crew career scheme may have been sound, it involved a long-term investment which would not yield any substantial dividends for several years. This would prove to be its undoing, as time was fast running out. In fact, rather than being able to indulge in the luxury of lengthy periods of training and consolidation, the demand for manpower created by the remorseless expansion of the Service was actually making it necessary to cut back on the length of time which could be devoted to instruction. As early as June 1938 the Air Ministry had been obliged to shorten the course attended by wireless operators and to warn units to expect that new arrivals would be less competent than their predecessors.7 Since wireless operators were the seed corn from which the Service was expecting to grow its gunners, and ultimately its observers, this did little to ease the problem of providing additional air crew, or to alleviate the training task at squadron level.

Photographs of badged corporal observers are rare because there was only a ten-month window between stocks of badges becoming available in March 1938 and all observers being made up to sergeant in January 1939. This is Cpl John Bowie of No 62 Sqn. A fitter (aeroengine) of the 15th (1927) Halton Entry, he remustered as an observer in January 1937. He died on 1 February 1942 in a Blenheim shot down over Malaya. (Lyn Best)

In the meantime, in accordance with provisions built in to the January 1939 scheme, and still as a ‘purely temporary measure’, the direct recruiting of observers was to be sustained, except that they were now to graduate as sergeants. So much for the Air Council’s earlier misgivings over their sanctioning of ‘instant’ corporals (see page 146). In the event, since the first cohort of direct entrant observers did not complete their training until the spring of 1939, none of them ever became corporals; they actually materialised as ‘instant’ sergeants. Furthermore, another clause within the scheme provided for all serving personnel who were already qualified as observers to be made up to sergeant as well. According to James Paine, this development caused consternation at Wyton where the sergeants mess was suddenly obliged to give house room to dozens of ‘jumped up corporals’, the Station Warrant Officer allegedly being ‘nearly in tears when he announced that the Mess was opened to us’.⁸ In all probability, a very similar reaction will have occurred in every sergeants mess between Stranraer and Seletar.

If the accelerated promotion of serving airmen had been a bitter pill to swallow, there was worse to come. The first direct entrant sergeant observers began to reach the squadrons of Bomber Command in April 1939 and this time it was the AOCinC himself who reacted. Under Air Chf Mshl Ludlow-Hewitt’s original proposal no one would have been given three stripes until he had qualified as an observer, which he could not possibly do in much less than four years. This provision having been short-circuited by the direct entrants, he was now being asked to accept as sergeants men who had been in uniform for no more than eight months and possibly even less. Protesting that ‘the rank which they hold has proved extremely embarrassing’, Sir Edgar complained that ‘they are, of course, unable to exercise proper authority and it is ridiculous that they should be given a rank for which they are unsuited.’ He fulminated on to the effect that the value of his scheme had been ‘torpedoed and doomed to failure’ by the introduction of these ‘counterfeit NCOs.’⁹ Now that conscription had been introduced, Ludlow-Hewitt wanted no more of these ‘half-baked sergeant observers.’ ¹⁰

As AMP, AVM Portal responded coolly to this, not entirely unjustified (see page 199), tirade by reminding the AOCinC that the object of the exercise had been ‘to give the Observer prestige and to attract the right sort of man’ and that this specific aspect of the direct entry scheme had actually been discussed with him in advance.¹¹ In short, it was a question of paying the rate for the job. Since all air crew had to be persuaded to volunteer, even with conscription, Portal did not believe that the Air Force could obtain the considerable numbers of high quality recruits that it needed without offering sergeant rank as an inducement.

Indeed, as if to underline their increased status, in August a regulation was published that made it absolutely clear that sergeant was the minimum rank in which an observer could serve. Any observer unfortunate enough to forfeit one or more of his stripes was to be remustered to some other trade.¹² Because there was no particular rank associated with being a wireless operator (air crew), however, most of them being mere aircraftmen, a demoted observer could continue to be employed on flying duties in that category, provided that he was suitably qualified (which most were).

Ludlow-Hewitt was obliged to manage his social and disciplinary problems as best he could, but his scheme proved to be short-lived in any case. The idea of aircraftmen flying operationally did not long survive the test of war and losses meant that it was quite impractical to wait three years for a gunner to blossom into an observer. Indeed, within a matter of months the RAF would be granting gunners, as well as observers, immediate SNCO status.

There is one other significant aspect to this spat. While AOCinC Bomber Command had been railing against the accelerated promotion of observers, he had had surprisingly little, in fact nothing, to say about ‘instant’ sergeant pilots. Yet all of his arguments had been specifically based on ‘the old tradition that a man gets his promotion according to his experience.’¹³ While this approach may well have been ‘traditional’, it was certainly not based on any fundamental principle. After all, non-commissioned air crew, both pilots and observers, had graduated as ‘instant’ sergeants during WW I. More recently this practice had been revived in the context of the direct entrant regular sergeant pilots who had been trained in 1935-37 and for the reservists who had been recruited since then. While the introduction of immature sergeant observers had clearly provoked Ludlow-Hewitt’s ire, should he not have been equally eloquent in condemning these young pilots?

This camouflaged Overstrand, K4552, which lingered with No 1 Air Armament School at Manby until the spring of 1940, was an example of the superannuated airframes that served as gunnery trainers in the late 1930s.

There was clearly a double-standard at work here, but why? Was it an arrogant belief in the inherent superiority of pilots, a lack of appreciation of the demands of modern aviation or was it simply that prejudice died hard among some of the old war horses of WW I? Whichever it was, it was clear that AOCinC Bomber Command had little time for the new breed of air observer, which was unfortunate, as most of them were destined to serve under him. Despite this unpromising start, by 1943 the true value of professional observers (by then navigators) had become plain and some of the more powerful members of the air force establishment were urging that their capabilities as airmen should be afforded a far greater measure of recognition. Ironically enough, by that time one of the most vociferous champions of the navigator would turn out to be none other than Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt (see page 267).

1938-39. Air Gunner training during the last year of peace.

As long ago as January 1936 the Air Ministry had declared that it was intended that all gunners would eventually attend a formal course (see page 150). Two and a half years later this goal had still not been achieved. While still holding out the prospect of such a course, a revised set of regulations governing the provision of air gunners was published in the summer of 1938.¹⁴ It included the, now very familiar, message that ‘in due course all air gunners for units at home and abroad will be trained at an air observers school but for the present all airmen at home will undergo training in Service units (while) airmen serving overseas will be trained locally under arrangements made by the command headquarters concerned.’ The last part of this statement was a euphemism for ‘on the squadrons, as at home.’ Note, incidentally, that this order said that ‘all’ gunners would be trained on squadrons, not just some of them as in the past – the situation was actually getting worse.

While this change in policy was clearly unwelcome, there had been little alternative. Having elected to introduce large numbers of direct entrant observers, and to teach all observers to be navigators, by the summer of 1938 the nonpilot training system was running to its full capacity. The hard facts were that observers could not be produced without formal instruction whereas gunners could – but only up to a point. As Air Chf Mshl Ludlow-Hewitt complained, towards the end of the year, his: ‘… air gunners were practically completely untrained. The Command were told to produce air gunners, and they did their best, but they had no facilities for training these important people properly …’¹⁵

It is true that, in succession to Eastchurch, North Coates had been running four-week gunnery courses since 1936 but, as in the past, these had never offered sufficient places to satisfy the demands of the growing numbers of squadrons in the UK, let alone those stationed abroad. For the time being, therefore, all gunners were to be trained at unit level with practical experience, and perhaps a few tips, being picked up during their squadron’s annual detachment to an Armament Training Station. Most of these units, of which there were eventually nine, had been set up in April 1938 by redesignating the substantially expanded network of Armament Training Camps. This makeshift situation could not be tolerated for long, however, as the adoption of Ludlow-Hewitt’s concept of professional, full-time air crew made it imperative that all aviators should be properly trained.

Early in 1939, therefore, two more Armament Training Stations were converted into Air Observers Schools, making a total of four. By the spring, in addition to training observers, North Coates, Acklington, West Freugh and Aldergrove were all offering four-week courses, including 12 hours of practical airborne experience, to groups of up to thirty air gunners at a time.¹⁶

1938-39. Observer training during the last year of peace.

The prolonged debate as to who was to do what in an aeroplane was finally brought to a close in September 1939 when the outbreak of war implemented the decision made in the previous May (see page 173) and observers assumed primary responsibility for aircraft navigation. Unfortunately, it was a task for which they had been ill-prepared because the training schemes of the late 1930s, which may have been adequate in theory, had never been furnished with adequate resources. Apart from this, larger intakes and longer courses had created considerable organisational problems. Figure 25 provides some impression of the complexity of the early course phasing arrangements which had to be employed to co-ordinate Service and civilian intakes.

Fig 25. The complex phasing arrangements necessary to integrate the early intakes of civilian and Service observers into a joint training scheme.
     Navigation     Gunnery and/or Bombing     Recruit Depot

Among the motley collection of old biplanes that were given a coat of warpaint and used as navigation and gunnery trainers was this Wallace, K6085, which was still flying with No 8 AOS at Evanton when war was declared. (Air Britain)

Fig 26. The academic content of the twelve-week CANS course on the outbreak of war.

When it had been decided that all observers should be trained to ‘sn’ standard the RAF had no school capable of running a course for them. Until more permanent arrangements could be made, therefore, the Leconfield-based, Nos 97 and 166 Sqns were pressed into service to act as a temporary navigation training unit, although their Heyfords hardly made ideal classrooms. No 23 Observers Course, the first to be trained against the new syllabus, began at Leconfield on 8 June 1938, moving on to North Coates for an eight-week armament training phase on 28 August. Nos 24 and 25 Courses were dealt with in the same way but a lack of capacity at North Coates meant that Nos 26 and 27 Courses had to remain at Leconfield and make do with just four weeks of locally organised tuition in bombing and gunnery.

Having disposed of No 22 Course, (the last intake to be trained against the old eight-weeks-of-armament-plus-four-weeks-of-navigation sequence introduced in May 1937 – see page 156) in July, North Coates had been reorganised to provide all-through training for Service entrant observers, the first such thirty-strong course (No 28) beginning in mid-December. Prior to this, North Coates had also begun to handle the Service-based, element of training for direct entrant observers emerging from the civil schools at Prestwick and Yatesbury. In order to provide the necessary accommodation for them, formal air gunner training had had to be suspended in the summer of 1938, hence the announcement to the effect that all air gunner training was to become a squadron responsibility (see page 178). Even so, North Coates was unable to cope with the entire observer training commitment and in the autumn a second Air Observers School opened at Acklington to deal with the output from Nos 3 and 4 CANS at Desford and Ansty, although this school did not train Service entrants.

While the training sequence had begun to stabilise by early 1939, its effectiveness was hampered by a lack of suitable aeroplanes. When it had been decided that observers should be trained against the full ten-week navigation syllabus (twelve weeks by the time that it actually came to be implemented in August 1938, at both civil and Service schools – see page 168) this was supposed to have included 39 hours of airborne time. It was calculated that a total of forty-eight Ansons would be required to carry out the intended practical navigation exercises. At the time few were available, some of the civilian-run schools simply being unable to provide all of the required airborne time (see, for example, Note 28 to Chapter 18). It is some indication of the lack of practical facilities (and the relatively small numbers involved) that the amount of flying time devoted to observers by the civil training organisation during 1938 was about 3,000 hours, compared to the 247,000 hours lavished on pilots.¹⁷

Lack of aeroplanes aside, the syllabus was very poorly defined, and it still was as late as October 1939 when a further eleven hours of flying time was added.¹⁸ The overall content at that time was as summarised at Figure 26.¹⁹ While it is plain that only 171 hours were specifically allocated, this represented less than five weeks of a twelve-week course, so a great deal of time was left unspecified. Much of this will no doubt have been absorbed by flight planning, post-flight debriefing and, perhaps, by practical plotting exercises in the classroom. Nevertheless, since there were eventually eleven civilian-run schools, all of which were presumably free to deliver the curriculum as they saw fit, the inadequacy of the course structure must have resulted in a significant lack of standardisation.

The situation was little better at the Service-run schools where the same shortage of Ansons meant that navigation and armament training had to be carried out on an assortment of obsolete Wallaces, Gordons, Heyfords and the like. So far as gunnery was concerned, these aeroplanes were armed with a single Lewis or Vickers Gas Operated (VGO) machine gun mounted on Scarff-style ring á la WW I, which had little relevance to men who were soon going to have to handle a gun mounted in, in some cases, a power-operated, turret. These old, mostly open-cockpit, biplanes were equally inappropriate for use as navigation trainers and it was well into 1939 before the availability of Ansons permitted much real progress to be made with the practical aspects of this crucial element of the syllabus. ²⁰ Inadequate aeroplanes were only part of the problem. Since the RAF had made little investment in navigation training in the past, there were very few competent and experienced uniformed air navigators available to act as instructors, and most of those who could be found were already involved in the pilot training programme. The civilian-run training organisation faced similar staffing difficulties, most of its instructors being academics or mariners, rather than aviators. They did their best to adapt but, while it was theoretically possible to read across from nautical principles to airborne practice, this approach left much to be desired.

Significant numbers of Ansons gradually began to become available to the training schools during 1939. This one, L7951, was No 3 CANS at Desford in August. Note the lack of a D/F loop aerial. (MAP)

This will undoubtedly have been one of the factors contributing to their limited success when civil contractors had attempted to train relatively large numbers of pilots as Squadron Navigation Officers during 1937-38. Since it was axiomatic that competent instructors in air navigation would need to be experienced air navigators, little could be done to improve the situation in the short-term. This problem would not really be solved until 1941 when some of the earliest observers began to be recycled back into the system as instructors after they had accumulated some worthwhile practical experience (see page 207).

With aircraft and instructors both being in short supply, the same was true of equipment. For instance, following a concentrated burst of development work to devise a (relatively) simple and practical system of sight reduction, the RAF had decided to adopt celestial navigation as a standard technique in November 1937. Although some squadron-level training had begun before the end of that year, this was initially aimed solely at pilots and each unit had to make do with just one sextant. A four-week Astronomical Extension Course was introduced for selected pilots at Manston in 1938²¹ but formal instruction in astro was not provided for observers until the autumn of 1939.²²

Similarly, while airborne radio direction finding had been technically feasible for some years, there were few ground beacons available for navigational training purposes. Furthermore, an examination of contemporary photographs of Whitleys, Wellingtons and Ansons in squadron service reveals just how few of them had actually been fitted with a directional loop aerial before the summer of 1940.²³ Obtaining bearings from ground stations was another realistic possibility but there were not many such facilities and the need to maintain radio silence meant that, except for emergencies, their use was immediately prohibited on the outbreak of war. In the absence of adequate radio aids, much reliance had still to be placed on map-reading, with lighted beacons, similar to those deployed during WW I, providing useful navigational assistance in the dark – but only at home, of course; Germany was hardly likely to be so obliging under wartime conditions.

The combination of all of these factors meant that there can be no doubt that there were substantial deficiencies in the quality of the training being provided and in the standards being achieved. Two months into the war, the system’s inadequacies had made themselves sufficiently plain to permit Wg Cdr F J Fressanges of the Air Ministry’s Training Staff to write a lengthy memorandum identifying the problems and recommending appropriate remedial action, much of which was implemented (see page 200).²⁴

Meanwhile, while it would require the acid test of operational experience to reveal exactly where the systemic weaknesses lay, there were plenty of straws in the pre-war wind. There are, for example, letters on file complaining that portions of the navigation syllabus had been too hurriedly conducted so that, despite their having carried out interception exercises, newly trained observers knew ‘little about relative velocities or relative winds’. Another complaint highlighted a lack of co-ordination between theoretical instruction and practical application so that, for instance, ‘methods of wind finding are taught in the class room but are not put into practice sufficiently in the air.’²⁵

In May 1939 HQ 2 Gp complained that the practical armament training of a batch of fourteen new observers recently arrived from No 2 AOS at Acklington had amounted to the dropping of an average of just thirteen bombs and the firing of 800 rounds of ammunition apiece. This was considered to be quite insufficient, the explanation offered by the school being a lack of equipment.26 Even worse, AOC 6 Gp noted that of four new observers posted to his squadrons in July, one had dropped a total of twelve bombs, two had dropped eight each and one none at all, yet they had all been graded. As the AOC wrote, ‘It is not understood how an airman’s bombing can be assessed when he has dropped no bombs, nor how an airman who has dropped eight can possibly be considered above the average.’²⁷ There were similar deficiencies in wireless training which led Bomber Command to write to all Group HQs in July to state that ‘it is considered necessary that Air Observers should be instructed in wireless and Morse for thirty minutes each working day’.²⁸

The professional inadequacies of the new breed were aggravated by their generally unsatisfactory nature, which had prompted Ludlow-Hewitt’s outburst in May (see page 177). By July the dust at HQ Bomber Command had settled sufficiently for the direct entrants to be seen a little more clearly. They were now perceived to be well educated, inteligent, keen and willing to learn but these attributes were still not enough to outweigh their shortcomings. Their ‘knowledge of drill, discipline and general service’ was described as being ‘almost negligible’. This, especially the latter, had fostered, in some cases, an ‘inferiority complex’ leading to a lack of confidence and it was feared that this was bound to have an adverse effect on their overall performance. Direct entrant observers were also considered to lack much awareness of their responsibilities as SNCOs and, even within the intimate confines of a crew, there had been instances of ‘embarrassing’ problems involving ‘men who are junior in rank yet far more experienced in their duties.’²⁹

It is unlikely that its full implications were appreciated at the time but the most significant of the salient characteristics of direct entrant full-time NCO air crew, noted in July, was that they displayed, ‘a tendency to regard flying as their only duty in the Royal Air Force.’ The RAF, having spent twenty years establishing its ‘officer/pilot’ ruling class, seems to have taken it for granted that its new recruits would conform easily to this pattern and automatically assume that they were to constitute a second tier of ‘SNCO/air crew’. The Service was evidently both nonplussed and disappointed to find that many of the new sergeants saw things rather differently. This was hardly surprising, of course, as the RAF had not bothered to teach them about anything other than flying, and it was plain that, as yet, it was not doing even that very well.

What was just beginning to reveal itself in 1939 was a problem caused by the fact that the Air Force had accustomed itself to associating the exercise of authority almost exclusively with its pilots and now, by extension, with its other flying personnel. When some of these flying personnel failed to see the connection, there could be only two explanations. Either the system was based on a false premise, which is to say that the entire concept upon which the RAF had been built was flawed, or the newcomers were at fault in that they declined to accept the responsibilities which were inherent in their status. To the ‘air establishment’, most of which consisted of Cranwell-trained products of ‘the system’, the first possibility was plainly unthinkable, so the blame was laid squarely on the shoulders of the direct entrants. In fact, the truth lay somewhere between the two. Moreover, the problems associated with dedicated flyers were not confined to direct entrant NCO back-seaters; they would soon become just as apparent among direct entrant pilots and commissioned air crew, of all categories, as these became more numerous.

We shall return to this topic later; it suffices here to acknowledge that there was (and is) a fundamental contradiction between the limited obligations of people who were, in practical terms, being employed solely to fly and the elevated ranks that were bestowed upon them. This was a conundrum that would perplex and frustrate the Air Force’s senior management for the next thirty years. Indeed, it is arguable that the problem has never really been solved.

Despite all of the difficulties with which it had to contend, the air crew training machine had continued to grow. By the end of September 1939 there were ten Civil Air Navigation Schools³⁰ and seven Service-run Air Observer Schools involved in the training of air observers, the latter being additionally responsible for the training of air gunners. The notional output of the combined system (ten CANS each running four annual 60-man direct entrant courses plus North Coates handling another eight 30-man courses solely for internal recruits) was approaching 2,500 sergeant observers per year.

Strictly speaking, once war had broken out, the graduates of this system were graded as acting sergeants (acting observer). Thus, although they could wear their three stripes, until they had done six months on a squadron they could not put up their flying ‘O’s. Worse, since they were not yet mustered as fully qualified air crew, throughout this probationary period they were paid at the old nine-shilling daily rate that had been introduced for corporal observers back in 1936. One need hardly add that this sort of indignity was not inflicted upon early wartime airmen pilots, all of whom emerged from training already badged as temporary sergeants and drawing their full 12/6d from Day One.

________________________

¹      AIR6/55. Note 156(38) dated 29 October 1938 submitted to the 141st EPM by AMP, Air Mshl W G S Mitchell.

²      AMO A. 17/1939 of 19 January.

³      Para 3 of AMO A.17/1939 addressed the continuing need to satisfy Coastal Command’s unique requirements, these having been previously acknowledged by AMO A.235/1936 of 8 October.

⁴      AIR2/2075. Correspondence on the minute sheet of file S.41477 in April-May 1939 between the Director of Postings (Babington), AMP (Portal) and the Director of Organisation (Donald).

⁵      Ibid.

⁶      Ibid.

⁷      AMO A.235/1938 of 30 June announced that it had been necessary to shorten the time devoted to the training of W/T Operators at the Electrical and Wireless School at Cranwell and stressed the consequent need for additional consolidation training on squadrons.

⁸      J R Paine, op cit, p62.

⁹      AIR2/2968. Unreferenced letter dated 12 May 1939 from Ludlow-Hewitt to AMP, AVM Portal.

¹⁰    Conscription, initially confined to men aged 20-21 years, had effectively been introduced in May 1939 – see Chapter 18, Note 25. On 3 September the National Service Act made all British males between the ages of 18 and 41 liable to call-up. An amended National Service Act of 18 December 1941 extended the upper age limit to 51 and made provision for the compulsory service of unmarried females between the ages of 20 and 30. In the event, few men over 41 years of age were ever called up and none older than 45.

¹¹    AIR2/2968. Unreferenced letter dated 22 May 1939 from Portal to AOCinC Bomber Command, Ludlow-Hewitt.

¹²    AMO A.329/1939 of 24 August. This ruling actually represented a considerable relaxation of the previous regulations, ie those governing the January 1939 scheme as originally published, which had bluntly stated that any direct entrant observer reduced below the rank of sergeant was to be discharged.

¹³    See Note 9.

¹⁴    AMO A.242/1938 of 7 July.

¹⁵    AIR2/1646. Minutes of the 14th Meeting of the Air Fighting Committee held at the Air Ministry on 29 November 1938.

¹⁶    A key difference between an Air Observers School and an Armament Training Station was that the former was established to have a fleet of aeroplanes in which trainees could be flown. Armament Training Stations did not hold aircraft of their own, beyond a few drogue towers, since their function was to provide facilities for squadrons (and FTSs) carrying out, typically one-month, detachments using their own aircraft. These detachments ceased on the outbreak of war, the five remaining Armament Training Stations being either converted into additional Air Observers Schools or absorbed by the four which already existed.

¹⁷    AIR2/3647. A memo, dated 26 May 1939, concerning the reporting of accident statistics, includes this incidental information on flying effort. Note that the pilot hours amassed by the ERFTSs covered the ab initio instruction of both RAF and RAFVR personnel plus continuation training by the latter plus refresher flying for ex-regular reservists.

¹⁸    AIR2/4459. HQ Reserve Command letter RC/186/Air dated 27 October 1939.

¹⁹    AIR29/598. A copy of the CANS syllabus is appended to the ORB for No 11 AONS.

²⁰    The need for Ansons to train non-pilot air crew had long been recognised and to this end Contract 690658/37 had been altered as early as 21 December 1937. The amendment required Avro’s Chadderton factory to build an additional twenty-one aircraft (L9145-L9165) for use by North Coates. These aeroplanes did not roll off the production line until September 1938, however, and by that time higher priority demands had arisen. In the event, only two of these aeroplanes were to be delivered directly to No 1 AOS, although North Coates had been issued with its first three Ansons (K8826-K8828) in July 1937 – see photograph on page 156.

²¹    AIR29/598. The ORB for the SAN records the start of No 1 Extension Course on 1 June 1938.

²²    AIR2/4467. Letter S.47667/DofT dated 5 June 1939, which outlined the revised scheme for navigation training, included provision for observers to begin attending the four-week Astronomical Extension Course. The first such course did not actually begin until November.

²³    This contrasts markedly with German practice, a similar exercise showing quite clearly that D/F loops had been commonplace on the Do 23s, Ju 52s and He 70s of the Luftwaffe’s bomber force as early as 1936.

²⁴    AIR2/4459. ‘Memorandum on Navigational Training Policy and Suggested Improvements to Meet War Conditions’ dated 14 November 1939.

²⁵    AIR14/16. These examples are taken from BC/4140/TR, a letter to AOCinC Training Command drafted for AOCinC Bomber Command in July 1939. Whether it was ever sent is uncertain, but the fact that it was written at all stands as testimony to the concerns which were being felt.

²⁶    Ibid. Letter 2BG/38/2/Air Trg dated 11 May 1939 from AOC 2 Gp, AVM P H L Playfair, to HQ Bomber Command.

²⁷    Ibid. Letter 6G/1908/1/P.3 dated 24 July 1939 from AOC 6 Gp, Air Cdre J C Quinnell, to HQ Bomber Command.

²⁸    Ibid. Letter BC/4140/TR dated 20 July 1939 from SASO Bomber Command, Air Cdre N H Bottomley, to HQs 1-6 Gps.

²⁹    See Note 25.

³⁰    Most of the ten CANS were collocated with an ERFTS, six of them being run as pairs by the same contractor, eg No 3 CANS and No 7 ERFTS were both operated by Reid and Sigrist at Desford while No 7 CANS and No 11 ERFTS at Perth were run by Airwork. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest, however, that the identity of the CANS element of some of these partnerships may have been effectively suppressed. According to Frank Harbord’s Familiar Voices (1998), Brooklands Aviation’s joint enterprise was a case in point. Observers who were trained at Sywell in the summer of 1939 were reportedly quite unaware of the existence of No 8 CANS and understood that they were being trained by No 6 ERFTS, an impression that has been confirmed in correspondence with the author. Similarly, in a letter to the author, G E R Parr, who was trained at Ansty in 1939, recalls that the unit involved was Air Service Training’s No 9 ERFTS, rather than No 4 CANS.