1939. The RAF’s conduct of early bomber operations – a naval view.
On 18 December 1939 the RAF carried out a daylight raid against German naval units at Wilhelmshaven. This mission, in which twenty-two Wellingtons (from a force of twenty-four despatched) reached the target, resulted in the loss of twelve aircraft in action, six more being damaged in crash landings on returning to the UK, two of them so badly that they had to be written off. In terms of casualties, the cost of the operation had amounted to fifty-six lives, two wounded and five men being taken prisoner.1 A similar operation mounted four days previously by a dozen Wellingtons had also sustained a 50% loss rate.
These early experiences served to shatter the RAF’s faith in its long-held dictum that the combined defensive fire from a formation of bombers would permit it to penetrate to a target in daylight and survive. After due reflection, Bomber Command was obliged to abandon this concept in favour of night attacks by large numbers of individual aircraft. While it is understandable that the RAF’s attention was sharply focused on the balance sheet, the analysis of the operation was conducted entirely by pilots. This was bound to have been the case, of course, because the RAF had no other air crew, at least none with sufficient status for their opinions to have been given serious consideration. As a result, some of the lessons which might have been learned were either overlooked or dismissed.
In fact there had been a competent non-pilot aviator over Wilhelmshaven on 18 December. He was Lt Cdr G A ‘Hank’ Rotherham, one of a pair of very experienced FAA air observers, whose attachment had been requested by the RAF because it was not entirely confident that its crews would be able to distinguish naval from merchant vessels, the latter being off limits. Rotherham later recorded his impressions of what happened that day.2 He has relatively little to say about the losses, which were clearly unacceptable but, from the standpoint of a professional airman, he was deeply unimpressed by many aspects of the way in which the operation had been conducted.
While recognising that it may be inadvisable to place too much reliance on the testimony of a single witness, the fact remains that Rotherham’s account contains what is probably the only considered opinion rendered by a non-pilot. Furthermore, his considerable experience of practical aviation gives him an authority which cannot easily be dismissed.3 As with most first-hand accounts, Rotherham’s description of the mission tends to differ in detail from other versions. These discrepancies are not significant, however, and they do not invalidate his overall conclusions.
Wellington ICs of No 149 Sqn. (P H T Green)
Having been given a familiarisation flight in one of No 149 Sqn’s Wellingtons (a much bigger and faster aeroplane than any that he had ever flown in before), Rotherham tentatively mentioned to the CO, Wg Cdr R Kellett, that, if his regular bomb-aimer were unavailable, he would be happy to take his place. He was somewhat taken aback when Kellett promptly offered him, a man who had never dropped a bomb from a Wellington, the opportunity to do it anyway!
Rotherham’s surprise at this ready acceptance to disrupt a constituted crew, was compounded when he learned that the CO rarely flew with the same crew twice. He was further taken aback to be told that, while some of the squadron’s observers might have dropped perhaps thirty bombs, most would have dropped less than half that number. Since Rotherham had previously dropped several hundred and was to be allowed a couple of practice sorties, his confidence was fully restored. In view of the importance of the forthcoming mission and the evident inexperience of the other bomb-aimers involved, he was a trifle surprised to find that his aircraft subsequently seemed to be the only one using the range.
On the mission itself, he flew in Kellett’s aeroplane (N2960). According to Rotherham, the navigator was a young pilot with about 60 hours’ flying time, and no specialist training, who drifted well to the north of their intended track.4 He also observes that the RAF still did not appear to have adopted (or at least declined to practise) an effective method of wind-finding (see page 165). The final stage of the plan involved an approach to the target area at 14,000 feet, the signal to attack being given by the leader’s descending by 1,000 feet, ‘a manoeuvre not calculated to improve the bomb-aimer’s accuracy.’ In the event, Rotherham claims that when he pressed the release button the bombs failed to fall off anyway, because the pilot ‘had not armed the master release switch.’5
In Rotherham’s opinion the entire operation had been a ‘black comedy of errors’ in which the RAF had failed with respect to tactical command and navigation and bomb-aiming. He was so incensed that, before returning to his desk at the Admiralty, he wrote a highly critical report which he handed to Kellett. Rotherham was subsequently summoned to HQ Bomber Command to be interviewed by the AOCinC. In view of his criticism of the RAF’s methods, he expected the worst, but Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt proved to be most cordial, merely asking that he go over the ground again for his personal benefit.
Interestingly, Kellett had considerable experience of navigation, or at least of long-distance flying, although Rotherham makes no mention of this.6 What he does say, however, is that, as mission leader, Kellett should have closely monitored the conduct of navigation himself; something which he did not do. In his report Rotherham expressed the view that a bomber squadron ‘needed to be commanded by a man who combined the talents of a good pilot, navigator and bomb-aimer. I recommended that the need for pilot efficiency be discarded first.’
What an outrageously novel idea! While the admirals may have been content to allow their pilots to take orders from back-seaters, however, the air marshals thought it no way to run an air force. Not in 1939 anyway, although, as will become clear later, one or two had begun to see the light by 1943.
1939-40. The capabilities of early wartime Observers.
It is clear that, in Rotherham’s view at least, the RAF of 1939 still had a great deal to learn, or to relearn, about the conduct of air warfare. Unfortunately, as suggested by the last section of Chapter 19, its observers were unlikely to be of much help. Indeed the generally poor showing of the observers serving with squadrons at the turn of 1939/40 was causing considerable concern, particularly as this lack of success was also being reflected in training where some 30% of the intake was currently failing to complete the navigation phase of the course.7
In December 1939 AVM Douglas reminded Air Mshl Portal that, although all observers recruited since the outbreak of war had been civilians, the direct entrant scheme had originally been introduced ‘as a temporary measure’ (see page 167). Since the civilian intake was clearly failing to come up to expectations, Douglas suggested that the Service should revert to its old ways and draw its observers from experienced wireless operators (air crew).8 Unfortunately, in view of the timescale involved and the numbers required, such an approach could not have come even close to satisfying the RAF’s needs. Nevertheless, while the majority of observers (and other air crew) would have to continue to be direct entrants, internal recruiting was reinstated in February 1940.9
The Director of Training, Air Cdre W A McLaughry, was inevitably drawn into the debate and he provided two explanations for the disappointing performance of contemporary observers.10 First, it was now clear that the pre-war direct entry selection boards had been insufficiently rigorous. This problem had been compounded by the lack of an Initial Training Wing phase, which had meant, on the one hand, that pre-war direct entrants had been poorly prepared for further instruction and, on the other, that the Service had lacked a convenient mechanism for the early weeding out of those who showed little potential. These early intakes, which had begun to enter productive service in the spring of 1939, had included the observers who were now causing concern at squadron level.
While this went some way towards explaining the currently unsatisfactory situation, it did not account for the alarming failure rate being experienced in training. McLaughry considered that this could also be traced to selection. When observers had been introduced into the RAFVR in 1938, he believed that many local recruiting centres had perceived numbers to have been more important than standards (see page 171). As a result, a significant proportion of those enrolled had simply been lacking in ability. On being called out, following general mobilisation, these pre-war RAFVR observers had become the first cohorts to enter training and it was these men who were currently having such difficulty in coping with instruction.
There was another factor which was common to both facets of the problem, the inadequacy of the available training facilities. These had provided the peacetime regular intakes with a poor foundation on which to build and had done little to assist the less capable RAFVR trainees to deal with the more demanding aspects of their courses.
Unless he could persuade someone else to do it, the observer of a Whitley crew would have been expected to arrange his own target illumination by dropping parachute flares down this chute. In this instance, however, it is being used to deliver bundles of leaflets. (G R Pitchfork)
Since the probable causes of the present problems had already been identified,11 McLaughry was able to report that several steps had been taken to improve the situation. First, the recruiters and the selection boards had been directed to raise the standard of those being accepted for training as observers. Secondly, the courses at all of the civilian-run navigation schools had been extended from twelve weeks to sixteen and the flying content, previously raised to 50 hours12) was being further increased to 60 hours.
Thirdly, it had been found that the limited skills of newly graduated observers meant that many of them were simply unable to cope with the School of Air Navigation’s (now at St Athan) four-week Astronomical Extension Course. Selection for astro training had, therefore, been made far more rigorous with the intake reduced to a mere quarter of the 168 per month which had originally been planned. In practice, it seems very unlikely that the actual throughput came anywhere near even this reduced target.13 Fourthly, the competence of instructors was being improved by giving each of them a three-week course at the SAN.14 Finally, a batch of ab initio pupils was to be trained against a Service-run, ten-week navigation syllabus at St Athan to provide a comparison with the standard civil-trained product.15
The subsequent refinement of observer training, and that of other non-pilot air crew categories, is dealt with in Chapters 23-25.
1939-42. The state of the art of air navigation.
While the performance of the observer of late 1939 had proved to be disappointing, the Service had correctly diagnosed the reasons for this. In fact, as the last section of Chapter 19 suggests, he was, in many ways, little better off than his predecessor of 1918. This was particularly true with regard to his training, but it was not entirely the case in other respects. For instance, the introduction of enclosed crew accommodation and a supply of oxygen had provided some improvement in working conditions – although the crew of an iced-up Whitley, labouring to cross the Alps on its way to Italy in 1940, might well have been inclined to question the veracity of this statement. Significant improvements had also been made in the quality of flight instruments, as a result of which airspeed indicators, altimeters, thermometers and compasses were all now (relatively) accurate and reliable.
Needless to say, at squadron level, the hapless observers of 1939 were being held responsible for the poor navigational standards that were being achieved and there was a widespread lack of confidence in their abilities. In a letter to HQ Bomber Command in December 1939, AOC 4 Group, complained that assigning responsibility for the navigation of his Whitleys to observers had reduced the function of the second pilot to ‘a sinecure’. Avoiding the obvious solution, which would have been to dispense with the now largely unnecessary second pilot, he suggested that responsibility for navigation should be restored to him, rendering the observer surplus to requirements and thus making him available for retraining as a pilot. This proposal was not acted upon, but the letter did include an interesting statistic in that it stated that ‘of 58 Air Observers on the strength of this Group today two only are considered competent to undertake the navigation of the aircraft for the type of work demanded.’16
The upshot of all this was that some bomber pilots, particularly the more experienced ones, were reluctant to relinquish responsibility for navigation during the early months of the war. Furthermore, they were amply backed in this respect by their AOCinC, Air Chf Mshl Ludlow-Hewitt, who had uncompromisingly informed the Air Ministry in July 1939, in writing, that, notwithstanding the prevailing policy, so far as he was concerned practice would still be as follows.17:
‘While the observer is available to assist in the navigation, it is intended in this Command, that the Captain shall remain responsible and that normally the second-pilot will do most of the navigation. It is, however, agreed that the observers, when they become skilled in navigation, which of course they are far from being at present, will be of assistance in that way.’
Although it was serving with No 1484 (Bomber) Gunnery Flight when it was photographed in 1942, the long row of bomb symbols on the nose of this Whitley V, Z6640, is testament to a lengthy period ofprevious service with No 78 Sqn. Sadly, in 1941, this operational effort, which represented a considerable investment in manpower, treasure and nervous energy will have produced a negligible return in terms of the damage that it had inflicted. (J D R Rawlings)
Thus, while the efforts of all observers were monitored very closely, it was not uncommon in the winter of 1939-40 for one of the pilots in the Wellingtons and Whitleys of Bomber Command to usurp his place completely and act as navigator himself.
First-hand evidence for this is provided by Sgt Frank Petts’ recollections of his time with No 9 Sqn in 1939 when, because of his greater experience on type, despite being outranked by his co-pilot, Plt Off G C Heathcote, he was the designated captain of a Wellington crew. In identifying the other members of his team, Petts records that it included ‘Sgt (Observer) Robertson who, although qualified to navigate, was used mostly as rear gunner.’18 He does not actually say so but it is reasonable to assume that Heathcote looked after navigation.
This was no isolated instance and it would seem that the fact that many observers had only recently evolved from air gunners, and that gunnery was still included in their training syllabus, often led to their being employed as gunners in the ‘heavies’ of the day. There was even some logic in this, as recorded by (then Fg Off) Tony Smyth, who joined No 115 Sqn as a Wellington second pilot in March 1940. He recalls that, because the observer’s job in a crisis ‘was to man the front turret, I shared navigation with him and from him I learnt the elements of Dead Reckoning.’19
The Hampden provided some precedent for second pilots taking responsibility for navigation because its authorised crew complement (as a first generation ‘heavy’ bomber) of two pilots, an observer and two WOp/AGs had proved to be unworkable, as there was only room for four men within the narrow confines of the Hampden’s fuselage. It had, therefore, become a common practice within No 5 Gp to delete one of the WOp/AGs. The AOC, AVM A T Harris, was not happy with this arrangement, however, as he considered it essential that the second pilot should be provided with appropriate experience leading to eventual captaincy, which he would hardly get if he was obliged to fly in the lower rear gun position; furthermore, from there, it would be virtually impossible for him to reach the pilot’s station in the event of the captain’s being incapacitated.
In December 1939 Harris submitted a case that would see the second pilot assuming responsibility for navigation and bomb-aiming at the expense of the observer, who could thus be dispensed with.20 A month later, this proposal was formally endorsed by the Air Ministry,21 even though this meant that pilots destined for Hampdens would now have to attend an additional course at the School of Air Navigation, a process that began in April 1940 and ran on until September 1941.22
The tendency, for pilots to work as navigators in the early days of WW II, was probably even more marked within Coastal Command whose pilots were routinely provided with comprehensive navigation training while passing through a School of General Reconnaissance. Indeed, until well into 1941 it was commonplace for the crews of Coastal Command’s mainstay, the Hudson, to include two pilots, the second of whom flew as navigator/bomb-aimer.
When the Butt Report was written in 1941 the standard aiming device was the Mk IX Course Setting Bomb Sight (CSBS), essentially an extrapolation of a design dating from 1917 (see Annex G).
But it was all to no avail. The legacy of twenty years of neglect (by pilots) meant that no one was really capable of navigating an aeroplane with any confidence at night, in bad weather or out of sight of land. The air marshals were reluctant to believe this at first but the proof lay in Bomber Command’s disappointing early performance. It took some time for this unpalatable truth to be accepted but a painstaking analysis of strike photographs taken in June-July 1941, carried out by a Cabinet Office official, D M B Butt, eventually provided the evidence that had been lacking and this proved the case.23
Butt was able to show that performance varied, depending upon: the prevailing weather conditions; the duration of the sortie; the availability of moonlight; the proximity of distinguishing features with which to identify the objective and the density of its defences. His, convincingly demonstrated, conclusion was that, on average, of every five night bomber crews despatched, only three even claimed to have reached the target. Of these only one had actually done so, in that they had managed to drop their bombs within five miles of the aiming point. It followed that only a tiny proportion of the bombs dropped would actually have hit the target, and for particularly well-defended targets obscured by the industrial haze of the Ruhr the ‘success’ rate was even lower.
Why was this? In short, because, with the tools and levels of skill that were available at the time, it was simply impossible for anyone (even including pilots) to navigate with the necessary degree of accuracy under wartime conditions, especially at night. Apart from map-reading, the only aids to establishing an aircraft’s position were W/T bearings taken with a loop aerial and astro. Either of these would yield a single position line but it required two (preferably three) of these to construct a fix and, since the accuracy of neither line could be guaranteed, even a fix was of only limited value. To quantify what this meant, during 1941 Bomber Command’s Operational Research Section analysed the actual conduct of navigation on 178 sorties sampled from thirty separate raids. It revealed the following:24
a. Astro sights were being taken on only 33% of sorties.
b. Approximately 60% of observers were using W/T bearings, the average accuracy of fixes constructed from such bearings being assessed as 20·8 miles.
c. The majority of position lines were being used in isolation, rather than as elements of fixes.
d. Quantifying the previous observation, it was found that three or more fixes had been found on only 6·5% of the sorties in the sample, the corresponding proportions for two fixes and one fix being 9% and 23 ·5%. On the remaining 61% of occasions the entire sortie had been flown without the benefit of a single fix.
As one would expect to find, there was a close correlation between the conduct of navigation and success in bombing. While it had already been demonstrated that only one crew in five was actually reaching the general target area, it could also be shown that observers who had found it without the benefit of en route fixing had had to spend an average of nineteen minutes searching for the actual aiming point. Those who had obtained three or more fixes had spent only eight minutes over the target area.
It should be appreciated that poor navigation was not confined to Bomber Command; it was a universal problem. Coastal Command was experiencing similar difficulties in finding convoys, the likelihood of achieving a successful rendezvous declining with the distance off shore. In 1941 the failure rate was less than 10% for convoys within 100 miles of the coast but at 600 miles it was 60%.25 In other words, more than half of the convoys which were most at risk from U-boats lacked any air escort at all.
The situation was actually much worse than these raw figures suggest, as only one in three crews actually flew straight to its convoy, the others having to conduct a search and the time spent doing this had to be deducted from that notionally available on station. This was not entirely the fault of the navigator in the aircraft, however, as the navigator of a ship in mid-Atlantic was unable to establish his position with much confidence either. The average along and across track errors in the notional position of a convoy were 35 miles and 15 miles, respectively.26 Since these were average figures, it follows that the ships could often be much further away. Under the circumstances, even if the air navigator had been able to fly directly to the precise position reported by the convoy, on most occasions the ships would not have been there when he arrived and he would have been obliged to start the inevitable time-wasting search pattern.
Since map-reading was not an option for maritime navigation, astro was probably even more important within Coastal Command than it was within Bomber Command. At the time there was little else available, but it should be understood that astro suffered from severe practical limitations. The most critical of these was the weather, because astro was simply unavailable whenever the sky was obscured by cloud. While this drawback was a significant problem for bomber observers, it was even worse for those who patrolled the North Atlantic at 2,000 feet or less, as often as not under an unbroken overcast (the same overcast that prevented convoys from establishing their positions).
The Mk IX bubble sextant, designed by P F Everitt, chief designer of the long established instrument makers Henry Hughes and Son, was entering service just as the war began. Progressively refined later models remained in service well into the 1980s. (Paul Brewer)
Astro had other limitations too, as described by ‘Dickie’ Richardson, reflecting (in 1997) on his experiences as a student on the 1938 Specialist Navigation Course:27
‘… we (the RAF) were nursing a bagful of false hopes pinned on improving astro. Unfortunately, there was simply nothing better to offer and although great strides were being taken to simplify its use, as seen from today astro was almost a non-starter. If only we had seriously considered the practical effects on a bubble sextant of a pilot weaving about, trying not to be shot down, our first years of night-bombing failures could have been anticipated and alternative electronic aids developed much more quickly.’
Richardson was one of that rare breed, a pre-war pilot who was actually interested in navigation. As such, his informed assessment of the real value of astro was perfectly valid and it would have been warmly endorsed by many, perhaps the majority, of wartime observers (and navigators). For example, FSgt Ray Silver, a veteran of Whitley and Halifax operations with No 10 Sqn in 1941-42, has left us the following personal impression:28
‘Theoretically, with our Mk IX sextants we could navigate by the stars as mariners had done for centuries. In practice, few identifiable stars were visible on any night. Sighting them from an aircraft that rarely climbed above medium-level cloud was unlikely. Persuading a pilot to fly straight and level over enemy territory for star-shooting was even more improbable. And converting starlight to a precise position line under operational stress was beyond most of us.’
There can be little doubt that extravagant claims have been (and sometimes still are) made for the accuracy of celestial techniques. Remarkable individual feats of navigation were achieved using astro, both before and during the war, but these should not be permitted to distort the overall picture. While it could certainly give a navigator a reasonable indication of his approximate position, astro could not be relied upon to provide an accurate fix.
To establish the practical accuracy of astro under operational conditions Bomber Command commissioned an analysis of fixes obtained by the navigators of Lancasters, Halifaxes, Stirlings and Wellingtons between October 1942 and April 1943. The results showed that the probable error of a fix obtained by a Main Force navigator was 22·4 nautical miles. As was to be expected, the hand-picked navigators of the Pathfinder Force were able to improve on this, their average being 15·6 nautical miles.29 Bearing in mind that, by definition, 50% of fixes were less accurate than this, the unavoidable conclusion is that, while astro was a very useful get-you-home aid, it was never accurate enough to satisfy the essential requirement of permitting a crew to locate a blacked-out target in the dark.
Lest it be thought that matters may have improved later in the war, as late as May 1945, HQ 5 Gp wrote, when advising on preparations for the deployment of Tiger Force (the Very Long Range bombing force that was to participate in the final offensive against Japan), that: ‘Astro is not a reliable aid, even when practiced (sic) by competent navigators […] It is recommended that Astro be deleted as a Navigational aid.’30
While astro clearly had its limitations, some improvement in navigational accuracy had been achieved through the progressive refinement of DR procedures to produce the air plot technique. In brief, this involved constantly monitoring the reading of the compass and the aircraft’s true airspeed and logging the time of each change of heading (course) and speed. By using the time spent on each heading to calculate the distance flown and then plotting this information on his chart, it was possible for the navigator to estimate where the aeroplane would have been in still air. By comparing this notional position with a navigational fix, showing where the aeroplane actually was at that time, it was possible to deduce the average wind velocity over the entire period during which the plot had been carried. A fix was also essential to provide a datum from which to restart the exercise periodically, since the inaccuracies inherent in a manual air plot increase progressively with time. Apart from the difficulty in obtaining fixes, the manual air plot was well-suited to operations which involved flying long straight legs, which often tended to be the case in Coastal Command.
The Air Position Indicator (API) Mk 1, which began to appear in 1942, introduced a marked improvement in the accuracy of Dead Reckoning and, as such, it was central to the air navigator’s trade until the advent of Doppler radar in the later 1950s. (M Lambert)
On the other hand, the accuracy of an air plot deteriorated very rapidly if frequent changes of heading were involved. This could occur if, for example, it was necessary to follow a complex route for tactical reasons or if the pilot was obliged to take evasive action. In either case it became practically impossible for the observer to keep track of the aircraft’s progress, the more so if changes of speed and altitude were also involved. To put it another way, a manual air plot was only a practical proposition if the observer was able to control the situation. Under those conditions he could direct changes of course, height and speed and thus (to a degree) stay ‘ahead of the aircraft’. Once he lost the initiative, however, the observer would soon find himself ‘chasing the aeroplane’, a situation from which it was very difficult to recover.
As with astro, extravagant claims have been (and sometimes still are) made for what could be achieved by DR alone. In reality, DR actually provided no more than an informed opinion as to where an aeroplane might be and the inaccuracy of this ‘guesstimate’ increased inexorably with time. One of the major sources of error was that an observer was obliged to assume that his pilot would maintain precisely the briefed heading, speed and altitude. This was simply not the case, of course, especially without an autopilot, and even when ‘George’ was available tactical considerations meant that it was often inappropriate to use it. The errors that were inevitably introduced by the pilot were compounded by inaccuracies in instrumentation, particularly those arising from the magnetic compass which, despite years of refinement, still left much to be desired.
Another major source of inefficiency was the fatigue which steadily undermined a navigator’s concentration. Tiredness could adversely affect his judgement, the accuracy of his calculations, his capacity to pay attention to detail and thus his ability to detect his own errors. All of this was bound to lead to an increased risk of accidents arising from navigational errors. In practical terms, a ten-twelve hour patrol over the North Atlantic was all that could reasonably be asked of a navigator before his performance had to be regarded as suspect. This problem was exacerbated by the introduction of very long range maritime patrol aircraft, like the Liberator, and it eventually had to be solved by establishing two navigators per crew.31
1942-43. The introduction of practical navigational aids.
From the previous section, it can be seen that three technical innovations were desperately needed in order to improve navigational performance: a high degree of automation; an increase in overall accuracy; and a reliable means of fixing position. The first of these requirements was met by the development of the Air Mileage Unit (AMU), a device which constantly measured true airspeed32 and then integrated this against time to calculate the air distance flown. This information was then resolved around the aircraft’s heading, resulting in an indication of change of (still air) position which, by use of suitable gearing, could be presented on an Air Position Indicator (API) as latitude and longitude.33 In other words, it would produce an automated mechanical air plot which would, within reasonable tolerances, accurately reflect the actual headings and speeds flown by the aeroplane, regardless of changes in altitude. This relieved the pilot of the tiring burden of endeavouring to fly with absolute precision for hours on end and removed most constraints on his freedom to manoeuvre the aircraft at will.
The accuracy of an API was totally dependent, of course, upon that of its inputs and much still needed to be done in this respect. The greatest single improvement had been the introduction of the Distant Reading, or Gyro-Magnetic, Compass (such a device actually being a pre-requisite for a practical API). This system used a magnetic detector continuously to correct the alignment of a directional gyroscope which then became the master instrument. Using suitable contacts, the aircraft’s heading could be picked off the gyro and relayed via an electro-mechanical transmission system to be displayed on repeater units at all necessary crew stations; it could also be fed into any mechanical devices which required such an input, including, for instance, the API, the computer for the Mk XIV bomb sight, the autopilot and the H2S radar display. Furthermore, it was possible to offset the output of the repeaters to compensate for local magnetic variation so that the reading displayed could be of True Heading. Since it was no longer necessary to be able to see the magnetic sensor, it could be installed remotely within the airframe where it would be free from the many arbitrary unwanted influences to which direct-reading compasses were prone, eg a torch in the pilot’s pocket. Needless to say, this sort of advanced technology was relatively expensive.34
Left – the Mk XIV bomb sight. Right – the bomb sight installation in a Lancaster. Gyro-stabilised, with its computer (the large box to the left of the couch) automatically fed with true heading and airspeed, and manually-adjusted for the wind velocity, the Mk XIV began to replace the earlier CSBS from 1942 and by mid-1944 it (and/or its US manufactured and supplied equivalent, the Sperry T.1) had become the standard fit for heavy bombers.
The creation of a means of computing and then displaying an accurate still-air position was two-thirds of the battle. To complement such a device it was also necessary to provide a reliable method of obtaining accurate fixes at will. This requirement was to be met by the progressive introduction of a variety of radio and radar aids such as GEE, LORAN, ASV, H2S and CONSOL.35
There were three more, non-technical, developments during the early years of the war which also did a great deal to improve navigational standards. The first of these was the result of progressive analysis of two years’ worth of operational experience which had established three basic principles that needed to be instilled into tyro navigators from the outset. These were:
a. When map-reading, a navigator must overcome the instinctive inclination to work from ‘ground to map’, ie to pick a likely feature on the ground and then attempt to locate it on his map, and discipline himself instead to work from ‘map to ground’, ie to predict what features to expect when and then to look for them.
b. Astro was to be treated as a basic navigational tool, not a specialist or add-on subject, and was to be introduced as early as possible with frequent, ideally daily, practice in the use of the sextant.
c. To avoid the unthinking acceptance of gross errors, it was essential that the results of all calculations were habitually validated by comparing them with the anticipated/likely result.
Having been identified, these principles were formally adopted in October 1941 when they provided the basis of the syllabus for No 1 Elementary Air Observes School when it opened at Eastbourne (see page 236).
The second positive development was the publication of an authoritative reference book. The pre-war navigator’s bible, The Manual of Air Navigation (AP1456), was long overdue for revision by 1940 and the task was assigned to Sqn Ldr F C Richardson. The result was Air Navigation, Vol I (AP1234) which was first published, to universal acclaim, in 1941, a second edition, incorporating Amendment Lists 1-5, appearing in 1944. Printed as a proper casebound hardback (rather than a loose-leafed volume with the pages held together between cardboard covers by a bootlace, which was the preferred HMSO option) AP1234, complete with its quotations from Lewis Carroll at the beginning of each chapter, was an immediate success and was soon recognised as the standard work on the subject, both at home and abroad.36
The final innovation was the introduction of drills. In place of the relatively haphazard methods used by early observers in their attempts to keep track of an aeroplane’s progress, latter day navigators were required to work to laid down schedules, adapted to suit specific roles and the local availability of aids. Thus a navigator might be expected to plot a fix every few minutes while flying within GEE coverage or once an hour when having to rely solely on astro. Similarly, a rate of wind-finding was specified, as were checks of vital equipment, particularly routine comparisons of all of the compass read-outs within the aircraft and a periodic cross-check of these against an astro compass.
Of all the electronic aids to bombing and navigation that emerged during WW II, the one with the greatest potential was ground-mapping radar. This is a wartime H2S set installed at the navigator’s station in a Lancaster. Also discernible is the ‘tunnel’ beneath the main instrument panel, leading to the bomb-aiming position in the nose and the flight engineer’s folding seat which is stowed out of the way against the cockpit wall. Behind this seat, just out of shot, there is a panel of engine instruments on the starboard side of the fuselage – see page 212. (Dr Alfred Price)
This disciplined approach, along with the new devices which began to become available from mid-1942 onwards, transformed the art of air navigation, both by day and by night, into something approaching a science. It was to be a gradual process, however, as the equipment took time to produce in quantity. When it did arrive, the early sets often proved to be temperamental and some of the new aids, notably GEE, turned out to be vulnerable to enemy interference. Furthermore, the availability of electronic aids was largely confined to the skies over Western Europe and the North Atlantic. In the more remote theatres reliance had still to be placed on drifts, astro and map-reading for the duration of the war.
Some idea of what was achieved by the methodical application of scientific techniques and disciplined methods can be judged by the improvement in the overall performance of Bomber Command. In the spring of 1942 only 23% of aircraft despatched, in weather good enough to permit photographic anal-ysis, were succeeding in dropping their bombs within three miles of the aiming point. Three years later the success rate was better than 95% and a substantial proportion of the bombs being dropped by that time were actually falling within one mile of the target.37
Similar improvements had been achieved elsewhere, notably in Coastal Command, where homing had provided the solution to the problem of finding convoys. A system had been devised whereby, once it was estimated to be within 100 miles of its convoy, the aircraft (which, in mid-Atlantic, was not vulnerable to air interception) made a relatively lengthy broadcast. This was received by the ship which reported the bearing of the incoming signal in a brief message that was too short to be of use to a U-boat |but permitted the aircraft to fly directly to its charges. After some initial teething troubles, this procedure proved to be so effective that by late 1943 the failure rate in finding convoys had fallen to less than 1%. This was a considerable ‘force multiplier’ in that it permitted the aircraft to spend the maximum amount of time on direct escort duties, since it was now very rare for it to have to conduct a search.38
1940-45. Wartime post-graduate navigation training.
To meet the demand for additional instructors, and for suitably qualified staff officers to fill navigational appointments in the ever-expanding wartime air force, St Athan (and its successors) continued to offer ‘sn’ grade courses. The first, labelled as No 1 War Course for Navigation Officers and Instructors, began on 9 October 1939 and ended on 27 January 1940. It was to be the only one to be allotted such a generous amount of time. The second wartime course, designated as No 2 Short Navigation Instructors Course, ran between 1 January and 23 February 1940 and this became the pattern for the next two years. Courses began at roughly monthly intervals with intakes of more than forty students to begin with, although later courses were about half this size, with the numerical split between officers and NCOs gradually shifting in favour of the latter as time went by.
It should be appreciated that, until the end of 1940, when some of the first cohorts of early observers could be recycled back into the system after having accumulated some practical operational experience, only pilots would have been attending these courses. Although the actual duration fluctuated apparently at random, some being as short as six weeks the Short Navigation Instructors (colloquially, the ‘sn’) Course of 1940 was notionally of eight weeks’ duration and involved no practical air exercises.39
When it was initially set up at Cranage, the CNS operated large numbers of Ansons supplemented by a few Wellingtons. After its move to Shawbury in 1944, Wellingtons predominated, the fleet including some relatively exotic models, like this MkXIII, JA383. (G J Thomas)
Despite the handicaps under which early wartime observers were obliged to operate, since navigation had actually been made their preserve, one might have expected some of them to have been employed as instructors. This did happen, eventually, but not until 1941 when No 1 Air Observers Instructors Course graduated from No 2 SAN at Cranage on 18 January. This course had assembled four weeks earlier in response to a directive that required the student body to be selected from among ‘war weary air observers who have had considerable operational experience.40
Thereafter, observers did gradually begin to percolate through the system to displace some of the pilots who had previously occupied all navigational appointments. It was a slow process but by mid-1942 observers were beginning to become influential at squadron, and to a lesser extent, station level. In general, this was as far as it went, however, because staff officers handling navigational matters at group or command level ten-ded to be squadron leaders or above and, although there was a handful of exceptions, such lofty ranks were almost exclusively monopolised by pilots.
Nevertheless, by 1942, with wartime pressures having forced the pace of development, considerable advances had been made in both the theory and practice of navigation. Furthermore, a number of graduates of pre-war ‘Long N’ and Specialist Navigation Courses had long since recognised that it was of crucial importance for the Service to have skilled navigators.41 These men, all of them pilots, had been working steadily to improve professional standards and on 14 August 1942 a major break-through was achieved when No 2 SAN was reconstituted as the Central Navigation School (CNS). This was no mere change of name, however, as the new title implied that Cranage was now a centre of excellence with a status similar to that of the CFS.
At least, that was the intention. Unfortunately, Cranage was a wartime camp with hutted accommodation and a grass airfield which, in winter, could occasionally become so waterlogged as to prohibit flying. It was difficult to foster the desired atmosphere of prestige under such conditions and, despite the best efforts of its CO, Gp Capt N C Ogilvie-Forbes, Cranage was never really up to its new task. There were other handicaps too, not least the available aeroplanes, mostly Ansons, which lacked the performance to fly the necessary representative exercises and were, in any case, too small to carry some of the latest navigational devices. The latter was a somewhat academic consideration, however, as the school had great difficulty in obtaining access to state-of-the-art equipment. As a result, many students already had practical experience of using aids that the instructors at Cranage could only talk about.
The situation eventually began to improve following a visit by the Inspector-General, Air Chf Mshl Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, in July 1943.42 Over the next six months more up-to-date equipment began to arrive, along with some Wellingtons, and PSP runways were laid between August and September (two runways and a perimeter track had actually been promised as long ago as December 1940). Despite this, however, the airfield was again waterlogged by December.43 What was really needed was a less primitive location and in February 1944 the school left Cranage for the relative comforts of the pre-war permanent station at Shawbury which had by now been provided with paved runways. Thereafter the facilities offered by the CNS provided a more appropriate reflection of both its status and its growing reputation, this being underlined on 28 October 1944 when the unit was renamed again to become the Empire Air Navigation School (EANS).
Fig 29. Syllabus of the eight-week Short Navigation Instructors (General) Course as at February 1942.
While the series of Air Observers Instructors Courses, which had been run at Cranage in early 1941, had satisfied the immediate needs of the training system, its continued expansion meant that more instructors were soon required. This demand was met in January 1942 by extending the (by now only six-week) Short Navigation Instructors Course to create the nominally eight-week Short Navigation Instructors (General) Course.44
It was assumed that pupils would already have some practical experience and a firm grasp of the principles of air navigation, although the syllabus, which is summarised at Figure 29,45 inevitably went over the basics again. But, since the aim of the course was specifically ‘to train pupils to become Navigation Instructors’, many lectures were actually prepared and delivered by the students themselves, the primary functions of the staff being to supervise and criticise with a view to improving their instructional techniques.
Graduates of this course tended to attract the informal annotation ‘SNI’, to distinguish them from the earlier ‘sn’, which had already been somewhat devalued because there had been a colloquial tendency to apply, by association, the ‘sn’ label to folk who had attended a variety of other courses which just happened to have been run by No 2 SAN at Cranage – now the sponsor of the ‘sn’ accolade.46 Having been devised to satisfy very specific demands [eg the twenty-seven six-week ‘SN Pilots Courses’, which had been run between April 1940 and September 1941, largely for the benefit of Hampden pilots; the ‘SN (Fighter Command) Course’; and the ‘SN Instructors (Bomber Command) Course’], most of these courses were comparatively sharply focused and thus reflected neither the breadth nor the depth that should have been implied by the ‘sn’ tag.
To the graduates of this rash of wartime courses could be added substantial numbers of graduates of the thirteen- (later ten-) week Short Navigation Courses of the 1930s and the even earlier alumni of Calshot’s air pilotage courses of the 1920s. With all of these people claiming, with or without official sanction, to be ‘sn’s it was clear that by the summer of 1942 the significance of post-graduate annotations, and the authority for their use, was long overdue for rationalisation. Furthermore, because of the rapid progress that had been made during the first three years of the war, it was now the case that, ‘an air navigator fresh from basic training is now ahead of many former ‘sn’s.’47
The upshot was that the following three standards were laid down:
a. ‘Basic’, which meant anyone, pilot or navigator, whose abilities satisfied the requirements demanded by the ‘Standard War Syllabus for Training Navigators’ as specified in the current edition of AP1388C (see Figure 39 on page 244).48 Anyone who subsequently attended any of the other extraneous courses which the CNS happened to run from time to time would be rendered no more than ‘basic training plus’.
b. ‘SNI’ which meant anyone certified as being competent to instruct air navigators to the ‘basic’ standard, ie to produce newly qualified navigators and/or navigators capable of filling certain staff appointments.
c. ‘N’, which, as before, signified graduation from the Specialist Navigation Course – see below.
This called for an extensive redesign of the existing Short Navigation Instructors (General) Course to cater for reality, because, while it had to produce a standard output, the entry standard could vary considerably. The approach adopted was to delete the ‘(General)’ from the title and to further revise the syllabus to produce a new Short Navigation Instructors Course (the SNI), which was offered in three lengths tailored to match the requirements of differing intakes. These were as follows.
a. An eight-week course for navigators who had completed basic training by following the current, and now very comprehensive, ITW – EAOS (see page 236) – AOS sequence.
b. A ten-week course for pilots direct from flying training plus those who had passed the course at a School of General Reconnaissance, and all ex-operational navigators.
c. A twelve-week course for pilots who had completed flying training more than a year previously.
Fig 30. Length and content of the three versions of the Staff Navigator Course as at January 1943.
The immediate requirement for additional instructors was satisfied by running five twenty-four-man SNI courses, of appropriate lengths, beginning at roughly two-week intervals during September-October 1942. This did not, of course, preclude Cranage’s running courses to satisfy other demands and it continued to provide an insight into the art of aerial navigation to, for instance, captains of bomber crews and selected single-seat fighter pilots, including some drawn from Army Co-operation Command.
Meanwhile, further consideration had been given to the application of post-graduate annotations. It was evident that, over the previous two years, progressive improvements in the quality of basic training, consolidated by the accumulation of practical experience, meant that the professional standard represented by the Short Navigation Instructors Course was now virtually the equal of the current Specialist Navigation Course. To remove the only remaining shortfall it was decided to introduce a radio/radar element into the ‘short’ course syllabus, thus making its academic content fully equivalent to that of the ‘specialist’ course.
The fourth of the, recently introduced series of five, SNI courses, No 45 Course, was actually the first to be run against the amended syllabus. To mark this change the SNI Course was renamed to become the Staff Navigator (NB not Navigation) Course, the first to bear that title being No 49 Course which began on 11 November 1942.49 Graduates of the new course were now to be classified as Staff Navigators, abbreviated to ‘SN’, and preexisting ‘SNI’s were offered the opportunity to upgrade to the new standard by attending a refresher course.50
It is worth stressing that the new breed of Staff Navigator, ie those whose records were annotated ‘SN’, could fill posts ‘hitherto established for officers qualified specialist ‘N’ and for officers and airmen qualified ‘sn’’, the use of upper and lower case letters being very specific here. In other words, all established navigation posts were now to be referred to as ‘staff navigator’ appointments.51
Differing intake standards continued to present some difficulties at Cranage, although it was now more to do with allowing for the amount of practical experience that a student had accumulated, rather than the need to compensate for the inadequacies of the basic training with which he had been provided in the early months of the war. Nevertheless, there were obviously going to be significant differences in the style and amount of instruction required by a pilot who had only recently gained his flying badge and a navigator who had already survived a full tour of bomber or maritime operations. As a result, the three alternative courses were retained but within a matter of weeks it had become apparent that, in order to cope with the expanded content it would be necessary to extend the duration of all three by a fortnight; the revised content is summarised at Figure 30.52
With the passage of time, there was a tendency for individual ‘Staff Nav’ courses to be dedicated to satisfying the particular requirements of Coastal, Bomber or Flying Training Commands, the content being adjusted accordingly. In the latter case, veterans tended to do the shortest course, recently graduated navigators did the twelve-week version and pilots the longest one. All three ‘Staff Nav’ courses shared the common aim of enhancing the overall awareness of the importance of navigation throughout the Air Force so, while many of Cranage’s (and later Shawbury’s) alumni became instructors or staff officers, some simply rejoined the ranks of working navigators – and/or pilots.
These arrangements remained in force until May 1944 when the three-stream system was abandoned in favour of a single thirteen-week, one-size-fits-all Staff Navigator Course. The syllabus content is summarised at Figure 31, along with that of the last wartime revision which was published in July 1945.53 Note, however, that although this was a notionally standard curriculum, a degree of flexibility remained and individual courses still tended to be dedicated to specific roles and were identified as such by having, for instance, ‘Transport’, ‘Flying Training’ or ‘Coastal’ in parentheses after the course number.
Fig 31. Syllabus content of the thirteen-week Staff Navigator Course adopted in May 1944 and as further refined in July 1945.
While the first level of post-graduate qualification was being revamped, a similar exercise was being undertaken with respect to the Specialist Navigation Course, which was currently being run in Canada and had not been significantly updated since pre-war days.54 Reform was clearly overdue and in August 1942 it was publicly announced that a review of advanced navigation training was underway.55 This resulted in the course length being more than doubled. Compared to the mere sixteen weeks and 50 hours of flying time that it had taken to acquire an N symbol under the previous arrangements,56 the revised course was to last nine months and involve about 150 hours of flying.
The first ‘Spec N’ Course to be run against the new syllabus began on 20 November 1942 at Cranage, where the CNS was now to have exclusive responsibility for training at this level; the last of the old-style Canadian courses graduated in the following summer. The new series of Spec N courses was academically demanding, the students representing a tiny élite – the largest of the three courses to be completed in wartime had only a dozen members drawn from a close to a million-strong air force, the selection pool actually being even larger, since some students were provided by the RAAF, RCAF and SAAF.57
Since the new syllabus was clearly going to be far more comprehensive than the original version, this cast some doubt on the validity of pre-existing Ns. Since the people actually wielding the new navigational broom were all prominent ‘old Ns’, however, there could be no question of withdrawing their annotations. Instead, a three-week refresher course was offered to bring earlier graduates up to date. Four such courses were run during the early months of 1943, per-mitting forty students to revalidate their qual-ification.
In view of all this, it could be said that 1942 was the year in which the RAF finally came to accept that navigation really was as important as pure flying. It followed that navigators were as important as pilots, although this rather novel concept took a lot longer to gain a worthwhile measure of acceptance.
A navigator, Fg Off Freddie Fixe, was eventually added to the crew of cartoonist Bill Hooper’s inspirational creation, Plt Off Prune. (Tee Emm, September 1943)
Nevertheless, it may have been a reflection of the RAF’s grudging recognition that navigators were people too that the one associated with the hapless Plt Off Prune had acquired an identity by early 1943. He was Fg Off Fixe and, while the attractions of alliteration are obvious, it may not be entirely without significance that Freddie Fixe actually outranked his pilot.
Fixe was not alone among Bill Hooper’s non-pilots in being named; other members of his crew were, left to right: Sgt Straddle, an observer who had been around since the summer of 1941 (although it is interesting to note that, while he was drawn wearing an ‘O’ badge, he was usually referred to as a navigator or navigator/bomb aimer, rarely, if ever, as an observer but, following the demise of the observer and the arrival of Fixe, Straddle was remustered in any case to become an air bomber); Fg Off Fixe, a navigator; Sgt Backtune, a wireless operator; Sgt Winde, an air gunner and Plt Off Prune himself, with his pet pooch ‘Binder’.
________________________
1 While this engagement was clearly a major defeat for the RAF, from the German point of view it was not a victory of quite the proportions that they appear to have believed. A detailed reconstruction, of what amounted to a thirty-minute running battle, in C F Shores’ Fledgling Eagles (1991), notes that the Luftwaffe initially claimed to have shot down thirty-eight of the twenty-two Wellingtons which reached the target area. Even after arbitration the score still stood at twenty-six or twenty-seven.
2 G A Rotherham, op cit, pp131-139. The second naval observer was Lt Cdr E H C Chapman who, like Rotherham, had been accredited since 1933. Chapman did fly operationally with the RAF but not on the Wilhelmshaven raid. Another FAA observer attached to the RAF later in December was Lt Cdr R A B Phillimore.
3 In May 1941 Rotherham flew in the Maryland of No 771 Sqn which discovered that the Bismarck had put to sea. Since he was captain of the aircraft, this exploit earned him a DSO, rather than the DSC awarded to his pilot. Later in the war, by then the youngest acting captain in the RN, but still an observer, Rotherham would command Katukurunda, possibly the largest RN air station, and ultimately the escort carrier HMS Trouncer. As with its aviation personnel in WW I, it is clear that the Navy’s more enlightened approach to back-seaters removed many of the obstacles that stood in the way of their RAF counterparts for whom such a satisfying career was simply out of the question.
4 Although the crew included an observer, Sgt Hough, it would appear that, as was a fairly common practice at the time, responsibility for navigation had actually been vested in the second pilot, Plt Off R A Cruickshank. To qualify for a flying badge KR 811 specified that a pilot had to have accumulated a minimum of 80 flying hours, so Cruickshank must have logged more than the 60 reported by Rotherham. It could be that that was his total since joining the squadron, but, since he had been on its strength since July 1938, it still seems to be an improbably low figure.
As to Rotherham’s comment that the Wellingtons were well to the left of track, he was not alone in perceiving this to have been unintentional. In his Wellington, The Geodetic Giant (1989), p24, Martin Bowman quotes another of the survivors, Sgt F C Petts, a pilot of No 9 Sqn, to the effect that, ‘I was not sure how large a navigational error was involved but I was surprised that we were so far north.’ The formation had actually been more or less on its planned track, although, since at least two of the participants seem to have been unaware of this, it does raise questions over the adequacy of the briefing procedure.
5 AIR27/1000. According to No 149 Sqn’s Operations Record Book (ORB), no bombs were released because there had been no legitimate targets, the only naval vessels being moored in the inner basin which was ‘off limits’ for fear of causing civilian casualties. If that was the case, what Rotherham had perceived to be Kellett’s failure to arm the release system would have been quite intentional, although it is surprising that no one had bothered to brief the lead bomb-aimer (of all people) on this rather significant tactical limitation. In correspondence with the author in 2001, however, Capt Rotherham was still adamant that the failure to arm the system had been an oversight.
6 In 1938 (then Sqn Ldr) Richard Kellett had led the three Wellesleys which had flown from Egypt to Australia to take the World’s Long Distance Record for Great Britain. While his involvement with this considerable achievement meant that he was closely associated with navigation in RAF circles, it did not follow that he was, or even that he had needed to be, an expert practitioner of the art, as each of the record-breaking aircraft had carried a graduate of the Specialist Navigation Course. In Kellett’s crew he had been Flt Lt R T Gething.
7 AIR29/546. For example, based on intakes of sixty, No 6 AONS at Staverton had experienced an 18% failure rate on its first wartime course, 32% on its second and 38% on its third, which graduated in March 1940. There had been only a marginal improvement by July, the next two courses reflecting 23% and 28% failure rates.
8 AIR2/4459. Minute from Douglas (ACAS) to Portal (AMP) dated 29 December 1939.
9 AMO A.93/1940 of 15 February.
10 AIR2/4459. An explanation for the poor showing of observers and a summary of the corrective actions that had already been taken were provided by DofT, Air Cdre W A McLaughry, in a minute, dated 1 January 1940.
11 Ibid. Wg Cdr Fressanges’ ‘Memorandum on Navigational Training Policy and Suggested Improvements to Meet War Conditions’ dated 14 November 1939 previously referred to at Note 24 to Chapter 19.
12 Ibid. HQ Reserve Command letter RC/186/Air dated 27 October 1939.
13 AIR29/598. The SAN’s ORB notes that No 1 Advanced Air Observers Course began at St Athan in November 1939 (note that, although it had been identified as the Astronomical Extension Course in AP1388 from as early as September 1939, St Athan did not actually adopt this title until No 12 Course of May 1940). Information on the constitution of these courses is fragmentary but it is known that No 4 Course (5 January–2 February 1940) was attended by three pilot officers and eleven sergeants. Since there were no commissioned observers at the time, some of the places on these courses were clearly being taken up by pilots. Indeed, the description of the course in AP1388 as ‘A four-week course in astronomical navigation for selected pilots (and air observers)’ suggests that it had been anticipated that pilots would predominate. The last in the series, No 17 Course, was run in August 1940.
14 Ibid. The fourteen members of No 1 Civilian Instructors Course passed through St Athan between 3 and 22 December 1939. The seventh and last in the series ended on 10 May 1940, although three more courses for (mostly) civilian AONS and EFTS Instructors were run in the early summer of 1941.
15 Ibid. No 1 (and the only) Direct Entrant Air Observers Course (of forty-one LACs) ran between 15 January and 5 April 1940.
16 AIR14/9. HQ 4 Gp letter S.107/Air dated 26 December 1939 from SASO, Gp Capt J J Breen, on behalf of his AOC, Air Cdre A Coningham, to HQ Bomber Command.
17 AIR14/57. Letter BC/S.21581/CinC dated 14 July 1939 from AOCinC Bomber Command to the Air Ministry.
18 Petts’ account appears in Martin Bowman’s Wellington; The Geodetic Giant (1989), p17.
19 A J M Smyth, Abrupt Sierras (2001), p77.
20 AIR14/9. HQ 5 Gp letter 2431/P3 dated 22 December 1939 from AVM A T Harris to HQ Bomber Command.
21 AIR14/9. S.40289 dated 27 January 1940, minutes of a meeting held on 8 January, chaired by DOR (Air Cdre Saundby) to ‘consider the number and composition of the crew of certain bomber aeroplanes.’
22 Although Bomber Command continued to employ pilots as Hampden navigators, according to anecdotal evidence, for instance, on pages 26 and 33 of Bruce Lewis’ Air Crew: The Story Of The Men Who Flew The Bombers (1991), it would seem that by 1941 the training being provided was quite inadequate. That said, before the type was finally withdrawn from the bomber role in 1942, the second pilot had begun to be replaced, as he had in Coastal Command’s Hampdens, by a navigator.
23 AIR14/3264. A copy of the Butt Report, and associated correspondence, is on this file (and on AIR8/1356) but it may be more readily accessed in Vol IV of Webster and Frankland’s The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany (1961) where it is reproduced in full.
24 Operational Research in the RAF (1963), p48.
25 Ibid, p97.
26 Ibid, p98.
27 F C Richardson, op cit, p137.
28 L Ray Silver, Last of the Gladiators (1995), pp83-84.
29 AIR14/4129. BC/S.25858/3/ORS.1(b), Operational Research Section (Bomber Command) Report No 75, dated 16 August 1943. Note that the figures quoted are for two-star fixes including Polaris. If Polaris was not used the overall accuracies were degraded to 24.3 and 17.5 nautical miles, respectively.
30 AIR14/895. Appendix C to HQ 5 Gp letter 5G/101/88/Air dated 16 May 1945 from the AOC, AVM H A Constantine, to Force Commander, Tiger Force, AM Sir Hugh Lloyd.
31 AIR2/8195. In his CC/S.9005/1/9/Nav of 2 December 1943, SASO Coastal Command, AVM A Durston, suggested substituting a second navigator for an air gunner in the crews of very long rang (VLR) Liberators and rotating them in 2-4 hour shifts, their ‘off duty’ time being spent as gunners, look-outs or operating the ASV. This proposal was effectively implemented by an internal Air Ministry policy letter S.79966/III originated by Wg Cdr J D Irving (TO2) dated 18 February 1944.
32 True airspeed is indicated airspeed corrected for the difference in air density between sea level and the height at which the aircraft is actually flying.
33 Further development of this principal eventually permitted the output of the API to be mechanically compounded with the local wind velocity in another device, the Ground Position Indicator (GPI), which projected a lighted graticule onto a chart to indicate the computed (ground) position of the aircraft. In a different mode, the GPI could also be used to find the local wind velocity. For a variety of reasons, it was an essentially short-range |aid, but it did have its uses. For instance, if the GPI was started overhead an easily identifiable position on the ground, it could be used to locate a poorly defined target.
34 AIR6/51. Note 161(37) dated 14 December 1937, submitted to the 106th EPM, stated that it would cost £176 to provide a bomber with a remotely located master unit plus three repeaters and a stand-by magnetic compass, compared to £65 for the traditional alternative of three direct-reading compasses plus a directional gyro.
35 CONSOL, which employed long wave radio transmissions, was unusual in that it had originally been introduced by the Germans (as Sonne) to provide U-boats with an accurate means of establishing their position while on patrol in the North Atlantic. Once it had been discovered, the initial British intention was to neutralise the transmitter sites. Fortunately, wiser counsels prevailed and it was decided instead to take advantage of the facilities, as the aircraft of Coastal Command needed a reliable long-range navigational aid just as much as did the submarines of the Kriegsmarine.
36 F C Richardson, op cit. Since the Crown held the copyright to AP1234 ‘Dickie’ Richardson was not entitled to royalties, which was a pity because HMSO ran off 125,000 copies for domestic use alone and it was reprinted in the Dominions, translated into Czech, Polish, Norwegian and Chinese – even the Luftwaffe produced a pirate edition in 1943.
37 Operational Research in the RAF (1963), p57.
38 Ibid, p98.
39 AIR10/1931. The September 1939, 5th Edition of AP1388, The Standard Syllabus for the Training of Pilots, Air Observers & Air Gunners at Training Establishments (Peace and War).
40 AIR24/674. Headquarters Flying Training Command postagram FTC/66364/40/Nav dated 13 December 1940. The ORB for No 2 SAN (AIR29/607) records the start dates of Nos 1-4 Air Observers Instructors Courses (but the end dates of only the first three). Oddly enough, in view of the fact that the course was specifically intended to ‘train air observers for ‘SN’ instructor duties’, the nineteen members of No 1 Course are noted as having been pilots by trade, suggesting that this may have been a clerical error on the part of the unit’s diarist. Of the total of about 120 students who attended these four four-week courses (all that appear to have been run in the series) only one is recorded as having been commissioned; the majority were NCOs, although, somewhat surprisingly, No 4 Course is noted as having comprised thirty LACs. Since LACs can hardly have met the criterion of being ‘war weary air observers who have had considerable operational experience’, could this also be attributed to clerical inadequacy?
41 Long/Specialist Navigation Course graduates who made a particularly significant contribution to the development of training schemes, the refining of navigational procedures, the fostering of an increased awareness of the vital importance of navigation or who commanded the SAN or one of the other influential training units included: Flt Lt J K Summers; Flt Lt N H D’Aeth; Flt Lt F J Fressanges; Flt Lt W E Oulton; Flt Lt G I L Saye; Flt Lt P D Robertson; Flt Lt D J Waghorn; Flt Lt F C Richardson; Flt Lt L K Barnes; Flt Lt N C Ogilvie-Forbes; Flt Lt R T Gething; Flt Lt J J Owen; Flt Lt A V Bax, Fg Off C E Chilton; Fg Off R J Cooper; Fg Off J H Dand and Fg Off P H Mackworth (ranks given here are those held while attending the course, not those subsequently achieved, most of these men eventually becoming at least group captains, and many of them air officers).
42 AIR19/297. Inspector General’s Report No 304, dated 8 August 1943, which was raised following a visit to Cranage between 29 and 31 July.
43 AIR24/674. A memorandum, CNS/S/500/9/Nav dated 8 December 1943, by Gp Capt Ogilvie-Forbes provides an account of the many problems that had been encountered in trying to run the Staff Navigator Course at Cranage since the introduction of a new style syllabus in October 1942 (see Note 48).
44 AIR29/607. It is evident from No 2 SAN’s ORB that, while eight weeks was the norm, a degree of flexibility was permitted and in the summer of 1942 courses could be as short as four weeks.
45 AIR2/8077. Syllabus published under cover of letter 2SAN/149/Air dated 10 February 1942, superseding a provisional version published on 23 December 1941.
46 To be pedantic, while it was necessary to annotate an individual’s documents to indicate that he had passed the Short Navigation Course, the ‘sn’ tag was of significance only while he was filling a post for which that qualification was a prerequisite, ie it was associated with the appointment rather than the individual. Unlike the N symbol, which identified an officer who had passed the Specialist Navigation Course, the ‘sn’ did not appear against an individual’s name in the gradation lists of the Air Force List (see page 144).
47 AIR2/8190. Air Ministry letter S.82405/DDTNav dated 10 July 1942, signed by Gp Capt L K Barnes, DDTF(Nav), on behalf of DFT.
48 AP1388C – The Standard War Syllabus for training Navigators, including Navs (BW), (B) and (W). A copy of the first (September 1942) edition is at AIR10/2317.
49 The last of the pre-war-style Short Navigation Courses, No 52, began on 11 September 1939. The numbering of ‘sn’ grade courses was restarted in October with No 1 War Course for Navigation Officers and Instructors, the second was the first Short Navigation Instructors Course and the numerical sequence was sustained thereafter via the Short Navigation Instructors (General) Course and the Staff Navigator Course until the last in the series, No 136 Course, which ended on 16 April 1946.
50 AMO A. 1220/1942 of 12 November.
51 AMO A. 174/1943 of 25 February.
52 AIR2/8190. The three versions of the syllabus were submitted to the Air Ministry for approval under cover of HQ Flying Training Command letter FTC/76385/N1 dated 29 January 1943.
53 AIR2/8191. A copy of the 1 May 1944 syllabus is on the this file, as is a copy of the revised syllabus which was published on 5 July 1945 to reflect decisions taken at an Air Ministry meeting held on 27 April.
54 Responsibility for the Specialist Navigation Course had originally been vested in the SAN at Manston. This unit moved to St Athan on the outbreak of war and from there to Port Albert (Ontario) in the autumn of 1940 where, as No 31 ANS, it had continued to train ‘Spec Ns’.
55 AMO A.817/1942 of 6 August.
56 AIR10/1931. The September 1939, 5th Edition of AP1388, The Standard Syllabus for the Training of Pilots, Air Observers & Air Gunners at Training Establishments (Peace and War).
57 No 1 Course ran from 20 November 1942 to 14 August 1943, No 2 from 16 October 1943 to 10 July 1944 and No 3 from 10 August 1944 to 15 June 1945. The total intake had been thirty-three of whom thirty were deemed to have passed. A fourth, and last, course began in July 1945 but the war was over by the time that this one ended.