1947-64. The provision of flying personnel for meteorological duties.
Because it was so small, the Meteorological Section of the GD Branch tends to be overlooked, but the fact that it was small did not mean that it could not suffer from a manning crisis. Once the early peacetime situation had stabilised, the RAF found itself committed to sustaining regular long-range meteorological reconnaissance sorties from Aldergrove and Gibraltar. Anticipating that the majority of its wartime flying personnel would have been demobilised by the end of 1947, the senior executives of the Meteorological Department held a meeting in May of that year to consider the way ahead. Noting that it was the RAF’s stated intention to provide navigators for observation duties1 (see page 279), it was calculated that the overall requirement would be for forty-five men, of whom seven would need to be officers. It was thought that they would require between ten and twelve weeks of training, including eight flying exercises.2 This proposal was submitted to the air staff.
Unfortunately, there was a shortage of navigators at the time. Since the Service was unable to meet its obligation, the air staff counter-proposed that the employment of professional meteorologists should be reinstated. This idea had to be rejected by the Meteorological Office which was suffering from its own shortage of manpower. Eventually, a compromise was reached. Having first pruned the numbers down to twenty-nine, it was decided to use surplus pilots. Nine of those selected turned out to be fully qualified men who were stuck in interminable queues for refresher flying courses. The remainder were trainees who had reached ‘wings’ standard but who, for a variety of reasons, were unlikely to be absorbed into operational training.3 These unfortunates were offered the alternatives of discharge, transfer to a ground trade or of completing their engagements on meteorological duties. Even though it could, in some cases, have meant losing their pilots badges, the necessary volunteers were forthcoming and by the end of 1948 all of the places had been filled.4
This was only an interim solution, however, and, either because they had been recalled to ‘proper’ flying duties or because they had left the Air Force on completion of their engagements, the temporary pilots soon began to melt away. The resultant gaps were plugged by using surplus gunners so that by November 1949 there were ten pilots and thirteen gunners being misemployed as flying ‘Met men’. A shortage of gunners was already being forecast, however, and there was still no sign of the promised navigators.
The post-war RAF encountered early difficulties in finding sufficient meteorologists to man its meteorological reconnaissance aeroplanes. These were eventually overcome by a reduction in demand rather than by solving the recruiting problem. The ‘met recce’ task was handled by No 202 Sqn initially using (above) Halifax Met 6s like this one, RG780. (B A Forward). They were superseded in 1950 by (below) Hastings Met 1s; this one is TG567. (MAP)
The experience of 1948-49 had served only to confirm, what all concerned had really known all along, that the RAF would be much better off employing flying scientists than misemploying spare (and probably, in some cases, disgruntled) aviators as meteorologists. Furthermore, it was intended soon to replace the tired old Halifaxes which were then being used for ‘Met Recce’ with the Hastings and this prospect led to a more determined attempt to solve the problem.
In 1950 the Meteorological Office agreed to try using appropriately qualified volunteers who were slated to carry out their National Service commitment as civilian scientific assistants. Those who were successful were to be given the rank of sergeant and wear the old flying ‘M’.5 Between April and September 1950 an initial forty-two prospective air meteorological observers passed through the Combined Selection Centre at Hornchurch, sixteen of them being selected for training.6
This experiment was not entirely successful as the National Servicemen were considered to have been too inexperienced. The following year the proposal was adapted to attract scientific assistants who had already completed at least two years’ service as meteorologists. The scheme offered a single two-and-a-half-year flying tour as a sergeant (complete with flying ‘M’) after which successful applicants would return to ground duties. Six months later they would be eligible to apply for a second stint of flying if they so desired.7 In the meantime the numbers needed had been considerably reduced in line with a cut back in the flying task. At the beginning of 1951 the requirement had stood at sixteen observers for sixteen aircraft committed to flying fourteen sorties per week. By the end of that year it was down to twelve observers (now two per sortie) for only five aircraft making just five flights per week. This reduced establishment sufficed until 1964 when the availability of alternative methods of keeping track of the weather, eg weather ships and satellites, permitted the RAF to give up its met recce commitment.8
1947-55. The provision of Air Signallers in the early post-war years.
Following the RAF’s post-war contraction, and the decision to adopt ‘all-through’ training for all aircrew, it was decided to transfer responsibility for the initial training of signallers (previously handled by a wartime ITW and, for a brief early post-war period, by No 1 ITS at North Coates) from Flying Training Command to Technical Training Command. This task was now to be undertaken by No 4 Radio School (RS), which had moved from Madley to Swanton Morley in December 1946. In September 1947 No 4 RS was tasked with handling as many as 300 cadets divided between initial, basic and applied stages. At the time, however, there was no indication as to when this ab initio training was to begin.9
This projection proved to have been grossly over-optimistic in scale and unnecessarily prolonged, because, under the 1946 Scheme, it was intended that all aircrew in the SEG categories were to be internally recruited, so most (if not all) of them would be part-trained already, and none would require a full ‘initial’ phase. For a time the requirement for post-war signallers was satisfied by a twelve-week Refresher Course for those returning to flying duties10 and, for internal recruits, what amounted to the wartime WOp(Air) syllabus, now referred to as the Signaller B Course.11
Notionally of twenty-eight weeks’ duration, the length of the Signaller B Course could be adjusted to reflect the level of expertise of the intake. It was suspended in March 1948, but briefly reinstated in May to admit three additional batches of internally recruited cadets. Identified as Nos 74A, 75B and 75A Courses, they all did a common six-week initial stage but the subsequent professional phases, were different, lasting twenty, twenty-four and thirty weeks, respectively resulting in output dates in November and December 1948 and February 1949. These were the last cadets to be trained under the old wartime arrangements.12
Air Cdre A E Richardson, AOC 27 Gp, inspecting the staff of No 4 RS on 5 August 1949. Note the unpopular ‘aircrew’ rank badges.
As previously noted, the idea of 100% internal recruiting had been conceptually flawed and it had failed to produce anything like the numbers required, obliging the Service to resort to direct recruiting in September 1948 (see page 284). All-through ab initio training eventually got under way at Swanton Morley a couple of months later with notional intakes of twelve men every three weeks, the theoretical maximum numbers on strength being 264 trainees.13
By this time, the training sequence was expected to take sixty weeks: a twenty-week initial phase followed by twenty-four weeks of basic and sixteen of applied training.14 The topics covered included: general service training; airmanship; technical education; instruction in the principles of electricity and radio (wireless and radar) and the operation of airborne installations; signalling (covering both the military and civil signals organisations and their procedures); radio navigation aids; practical exercises both on synthetic training rigs and in the air; and an introduction to planned servicing and technical administration – and Morse practice.
Having qualified, a new signaller was intended to spend a further eight weeks at an Air Navigation School15 followed by a twelve-week practical gunnery course covering: aircraft recognition; the ·303″ Browning and the 20mm Hispano; gun maintenance and cleaning; gun harmonisation; turrets and their manipulation, including tactics and live air firing; pyrotechnics and an introduction to resistance to interrogation. This was to be followed by a ten-week stint at an Advanced Flying School to gain practical experience of flying as a member of the crew of a relatively heavy aircraft (the Wellington) prior to posting to a type-specific OCU for a further twelve to eighteen weeks, depending upon the type of aircraft. In total, therefore, a direct entrant signaller was expected to take between 102 and 108 weeks to progress from induction to joining his first squadron.16
The Anson T.22 was withdrawn from service at the beginning of 1959. Seen here towards the end of its time, with No 1 AES, this one (VS595) had been training air signallers since its delivery to No 4 RS at Swanton Morley ten years earlier. (MAP)
Once again, all of this planning proved to have been overoptimistic, not least because there were, at the time, no facilities for gunnery training (see page 317), and other factors would soon conspire to reduce the length of the sequence. Problems began to manifest themselves from the outset and when No 1 Direct Entrant Signallers Course (DE 1) eventually began on 4 November 1948 it had just four cadets, rather than the anticipated twelve. DE 2 followed a fortnight later but it had only eight. It was June 1949 (DE 11) before the first twelve-man course could be assembled and October before this became the norm.
To support the ambitious new syllabus purpose-built Anson T.22s began to replace the school’s wartime fleet of Dominies and Proctors from February 1949 and by the time that the first six ‘all through’ direct entrant cadets passed out as S4s on 31 January 1950, they had each accumulated some 75 hours of flying time.
By that time, however, the manning situation was becoming critical. Ever since the end of the war, the Service had been relying heavily on wartime veterans serving on three-year extended service engagements, but this option had been withdrawn in 1947 (see page 281) so the last of them would be leaving in 1950. It had been intended to replace them with direct entrants, but, as with internal recruits, these had failed to materialise in sufficient numbers. Once again the RAF was faced with a quantity versus quality dilemma and, as usual, it opted for quantity.
One solution being actively pursued from early 1949 was to refresh large numbers, ‘at least 250’, of ex-signallers against a twenty-week syllabus. In order to speed up the output to operational commands, the course was shortened by two weeks in May and the basic Morse qualification standard was reduced from the current twenty words per minute (wpm) to eighteen wpm.17
Similarly, in order to accelerate the flow of ab initio trainees, six weeks of general service training was trimmed out of the ‘all-through’ syllabus in October 1949. The deletion of the radar content in February 1950 saved another six weeks (and 20 flying hours). When facilities for gunnery training became available in 1950, the course was soon cut from twelve weeks to just eight and the two months at No 2 ANS never happened. The result was to reduce the overall duration of the training sequence by some five months.
Although it could not have been foreseen at the time, of course, within a matter of months the manning problem would be solved by the decision to train conscripts as aircrew precipitated by the outbreak of the Korean War. This was just in time to reverse the declining trend. In July 1950 global air signaller manning was reported to be down to 65% of establishment,18 but by September this had already recovered to 87·5%.19
Ever since the summer of 1948, if not earlier, it had been argued in some quarters that it was anomalous for aircrew to be trained by Technical Training Command.20 This campaign was eventually concluded on 1 August 1950, when No 4 RS was transferred to Flying Training Command, although without the, previously integral, initial training phase. Now reduced to just twelve weeks, initial training was to remain a Technical Training Command responsibility which was to be discharged by No 3 RS at Compton Bassett. No 3 RS began to make its contribution on 3 January 1951 when it inducted Nos 41 and 42 Direct Entrant and its No 1 National Service Courses. By that time the first conscripts were already undergoing training at Swanton Morley where No 1 National Service Signallers Course had begun on 17 August 1950 followed by No 2 on 1 November.21
To underline its change of management, on 1 April 1951 No 4 RS was restyled No 1 Air Signallers School (ASS) and, a year later, a second was opened at Halfpenny Green. To cope with the increased throughput, at much the same time, February 1952, the Anson fleet at Swanton Morley (but not at Halfpenny Green) was supplemented by Prentices.
It had been intended that No 2 ASS would handle the forty-six-week all-through training of the large numbers of National Servicemen that were now being inducted plus the initial training of direct entrant regulars. No 3 RS accordingly relinquished its aircrew training commitment on 7 July 1952 when its Air Signallers Squadron was transferred to No 2 ASS, along with the 164 resident cadets comprising Nos 17 and 18 National Service and Nos 73-76 Direct Entrant Courses.
In the event, while all prospective air signallers would receive their initial training at Halfpenny Green for a time, the unit also provided all-through training for some direct entrants, as well as National Servicemen, although all later courses (regulars and conscripts) underwent the applied stage at No 1 ASS. But the Korean War bulge soon subsided, rendering the additional capacity superfluous and, having transferred the final intake of National Servicemen, No 25 Course, to Swanton Morley in August 1953, No 2 ASS closed in September, leaving No 1 ASS responsible for all aspects of air signaller training.
1956 onwards. The Air Signaller is supplanted by the Air Electronics Officer and the Air Electronics Operator.
By this time the RAF’s attention was beginning to focus increasingly on the challenges associated with the provision of aircrew for the projected V-Force, a development that was to have major implications for air signals personnel. While the option of deleting the fifth member of a V-bomber crew had finally been ruled out during 1954, a degree of uncertainty still remained as to what he would actually do. It was assumed, however, that, whatever it turned out to be, it would be too demanding for the traditional air signaller and that it was likely to require levels of education and intelligence similar to those associated with pilots and navigators. If this conclusion were to be accepted, it automatically followed that, since he would have to be recruited from the same pool as pilots and navigators, the third back-seater would, like them, also have to be commissioned. By 1955 it was being argued that Coastal Command might also have a requirement for the new type of ‘radio officer’ and the whole question was referred to the Air Council which delegated consideration of the problem to its Standing Committee.
A major reservation that emerged during the subsequent debate centred on the problems that were likely to be encountered in recruiting these men. In view of the RAF’s perennial problems with acquiring sufficient pilots and, especially, navigators, it was feared that it might well be impossible to find yet more volunteers of a similar calibre. This prompted further examination of the possibility of extending the terms of reference of navigators to embrace the responsibilities of the new trade.
While the ‘multi-skilled nav’ approach might appear to have presented a management solution to some aspects of the problem it would have done nothing to reduce the overall numbers required, because all three rear crew seats still needed to be filled.22 Furthermore, an analysis of likely work patterns indicated that only 20% of the skills associated with the traditional navigator were immediately applicable to the tasks of, what was now beginning to be referred to as, the ‘electronics officer’ and vice versa. As a result, if navigators were to be given this additional responsibility, it followed that their training would have to be considerably extended.
Against this, it was argued that, ‘all aircrew expect their training to lead logically to their subsequent operational role and they resent and discard what is thought to be unnecessary training.’ It was also pointed out that ‘operational conditions inevitably produce specialists and separate navigator and electronics officers will become a reality, whatever training system is used or aircrew title adopted.’ It was eventually concluded that navigators did not represent a solution to an increasingly pressing problem (the Valiant had already entered service) and, since there was no practical alternative, that the recruiting challenge would have to be met head on.23
The Air Council accepted these arguments and the introduction of the entirely new aircrew category of the air electronics officer (AEO) was announced in the spring of 1956.24
When the first AEOs actually began to emerge in 1957, their prospects looked particularly bright. That year’s White Paper on Defence had been drafted on the assumption that the RAF’s future lay in missiles, rather than aeroplanes. It followed that pilots would soon become largely redundant, the need for their manual dexterity being replaced by a demand for the more intellectual and technical capabilities of navigators and, to an even greater extent, AEOs. In the dawn of the era of Bloodhound and Thor, and with the prospect of BLUE ENVOY and BLUE STREAK to follow, it looked to some as if the new AEOs might eventually inherit the Air Force. In retrospect, this may appear to have been an exercise in wishful thinking but, at the time, the idea really did not seem to be that far-fetched, especially to those who believed in the new gospel.
Many AEO’s were directly recruited but others were found from within the Service by cross-training commissioned air signallers, by cross-training and comm-issioning selected NCO air signallers and by drawing on suitable ground tradesmen. Once qualified, AEOs were to wear a new 1939-pattern flying badge with an ‘AE’ within the laurel wreath, although this was not formally introduced until 1957.25 An outline of the syllabus against which they were to be trained is at Figure 58.26
Fig 58. The AEO syllabus (plus four week’s leave) circa 1957.
AEOs were to be trained alongside air signallers on Swanton Morley’s Ansons and, to reflect this change of emphasis in the unit’s task, No 1 Air Signallers School was restyled No 1 Air Electronics School on 1 April 1957. This milestone was also marked by the withdrawal of the Prentice. At the end of the year the school moved to Hullavington where it was re-equipped with Varsitys during 1958, the last Ansons being withdrawn in 1959.
For the first decade after their introduction the majority of AEOs were to be found within Bomber Command, while air signallers still abounded in Coastal Command, although the odd stray could be found in the wrong camp and a few AEOs occasionally escaped to Transport Command. It should also be recorded that, although it was the RAF’s intention that its V-bombers should have all-officer crews (see Chapter 31, Note 43), this was not essential and, pending the availability of adequate numbers of AEOs, it was impossible to achieve this aim in any case. As a result, some NCO air signallers had to be substituted in the early days, particularly on Valiant squadrons.27 Nevertheless, by the time that the venerable Shackleton finally began to give way to the Nimrod in 1970, most of Coastal Command’s commissioned air signals personnel were AEOs and, of equal significance, there had been a major change in the NCO complement of a maritime crew.
At much the same time as the AEO had been introduced, the increasing complexity of the detection equipment installed in Shackletons, had made it desirable to raise the overall standard of technical competence of air signallers. The first step in this direction had been taken in 1956 when the twenty-week Air Signallers Advanced Course had been set up at Swanton Morley.28 Students who were not already graded as air signallers (A) graduated as such and this upgrade soon became one of the primary aims of the course.
There was another developing trend which was causing a major reappraisal of the role of all air signallers. Ever since the days of the RFC/RNAS, long-range communications had relied on W/T, with the STR18 HF radio beginning to replace the wartime T1154/R1155 from the mid-1950s onwards. Whichever equipment was used, involved Morse at about 20 wpm,29 way beyond the nominal 8 wpm which is all that was demanded of pilots and navigators, and this had ensured that the crew of any aeroplane that had a respectable range had always included a dedicated comm-unicator.
The introduction of single-sideband HF radios (initially the Collins 618T series) in the later 1960s permitted all exchanges to be conducted using R/T. Pilots could handle voice traffic themselves, of course, which rendered the air signaller and his Morse key increasingly redundant. They did not vanish overnight, of course, the speed at which they were withdrawn from the transport fleet broadly mirroring the rate at which piston-engines were being displaced by gas turbines, eg Valettas, Beverleys and Hastings by Andovers, Argosys and Hercules. The later types never included an air signaller in their crews and they had largely disappeared from the flight decks of the older Comets, Britannias and VC10s by 1970.
Meanwhile, in January 1957, even before the school had moved to Hullavington, the recruitment of ab initio air signallers had been suspended.30 With hindsight, one could speculate that this may have been in anticipation of the inevitable reduction in the size of the Air Force that would be announced in Duncan Sandys’ imminent Defence White Paper. Whether these events were connected or not, the cutbacks did create a surplus of manpower. Most of the air signallers involved were disposed of during 1958 under a voluntary redundancy scheme. Not for the last time, the RAF had implemented a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
The rearward-facing AEO’s station in a Vulcan B.2 circa 1963. Most of the controls and displays on the bulkhead were associated with the STR18 HF radio and a variety of electronic countermeasures, eg RED SHRIMP, BLUE DIVER, BLUE SAGA and chaff; the circular screen is the display for the RED STEER Mk 1 tail warning radar. The large panel below the porthole is a schematic representation of the aircraft’s all-important electrical system, the control of which was the AEO’s responsibility. Above the porthole is a flare pistol. At the right hand edge of the desk is the Morse key – critically important when the Vulcan entered service in the 1950s, by the time that it was withdrawn twenty-five years later Morse had been largely superseded by voice communication, the legacy key still serving as the AEO’s transmit switch. (British Aerospace)
Within two years there was already a shortage of airmen aircrew and air signaller recruiting was reintroduced in 1959.31 While this was to include direct entrants, the ‘establishment’s’ knee jerk reaction was, as ever, to assume that technicians would be only too happy to fly. HQ Flying Training Command accordingly announced that on 26 October 1959 Hullavington would accept the first course, which was to last thirty-six weeks and consist of fifteen airmen drawn from Trade Group 11.32 Unfortunately, only a relatively few applicants came forward and of these only one was deemed suitable. An attempt to plug the gap by using cadets who had been suspended from officer training at the Initial Training School stage and low-grade candidates from the Aircrew Selection Centre, still failed to produce the required numbers. In the event the first course of the new sequence, which was now to last fifty weeks, consisted largely of direct entrants and did not begin until 4 January 1960.
Having previously dropped its numerical designation, to become simply the Air Electronics School, the unit moved to Topcliffe on 14 January 1962. At the end of that year, it was announced that the Air Signallers Advanced Course, which had been unaffected by the moratorium on ab initio training, was to be redesignated as the Air Electronics Conversion Course. Thenceforth, all graduates [and all current air signallers (A)] were to be recategorised as air electronics operators (AEOp),33 exchanging their ‘S’ badges for the ‘AE’ which had previously been worn only by AEOs, ie by officers.34 Following the creation of this new category, the training of all air signals personnel underwent a major overhaul between 1965 and 1967.
This process began when AEOps started to be trained from the outset, that is to say, without having to pass through an initial air signaller stage. Of the ten men who graduated with No 42 Air Signallers Course in July 1965, for instance, six [probably ex-tradesmen, who would have equated to the old air signallers (A)] wore an ‘AE’ badge and four [presumably ab initio students] wore an ‘S’. The last four air signallers to graduate as such completed their course (No 55) in December 1966. A few weeks later the last all-officer course (No 45) ended. Thereafter, AEOs and AEOps were to be trained alongside each other against a new thirteen-month syllabus. No 1 Air Electronics Course graduated in August 1967 but changing requirements dictated that the joint AEO/AEOp course would turn out to be merely a transitional arrangement.
By this time ten years’ worth of officers had been trained, primarily to satisfy the needs of the expanding Medium Bomber Force. As soon as the V-Force had reached its full potential, however, it began to contract, taking with it the demand for AEOs, especially as the missile era predicted by Duncan Sandys had failed to materialise. Somewhat ironically, the V-Force’s decline had got off to a flying start as a result of the abrupt withdrawal of the Valiant in 1965. This had created an unforeseen surplus of trained AEOs sufficient to permit direct recruiting to be terminated, the last ab initio officers graduating in 1967. Thereafter, as with air signallers in the past, the RAF trained all of its air electronics personnel as airmen aircrew. The much reduced requirement for officers was met by selection from the pool of NCOs, some of them being commissioned on graduation.
While these changes to basic training were being made, the school continued to run its Air Electronics Conversion Course to permit the dwindling rump of air signallers to be recategorised as AEOps, this process continuing until 1972. In October of the following year, the school (which was now also responsible for training air engineers35) moved to Finningley. Shortly afterwards the Varsity was retired, obliging trainee AEOps to gain their airborne experience on the Dominie, often during sorties primarily designed for the benefit of trainee navigators. This was hardly an ideal arrangement but its drawbacks were largely offset by the progressive introduction of increasingly sophisticated synthetic training aids. Practical experience continued to be provided in much the same manner following the transfer of all non-pilot aircrew training to Cranwell in late 1995, the instruction of AEOps subsequently becoming just one of the responsibilities of the multi-faceted Navigator and Airman Aircrew School (NAAS).
A Varsity, WJ907, of Topcliffe’s No 1 AES in 1963. (MAP)
There is one other aspect of the air signals specialisation which is worthy of note. AEOps were categorised as ‘wet’ or ‘dry’ men, which is to say that they dealt primarily either with sonobuoys and acoustic processing or with electronic support measures, communications and/or radar. All AEOs/AEOps were originally trained in both disciplines, the way in which they would subsequently be employed being decided at the OCU stage, but streaming was eventually brought forward to become an element of basic training. It was not particularly encouraged, but it was possible for an AEOp to change his specialisation and some ‘wet’ men did convert to ‘dry’, although relatively few moved in the other direction.
The ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ labels were not applied to AEOs, incidentally, although most of those who had been ‘wet’ specialists as AEOps remained in the maritime world after they had been commissioned. By contrast, AEOs (and AEOps) having a ‘dry’ background tended to have employment opportunities beyond those offered by the maritime Nimrod, with No 51 Sqn, for instance, as Wing Electronic Warfare Officers on strike/attack stations or as members of the mission crew of a Sentry.36
1969. The Air Signaller is reinstated for the exclusive benefit of No 51 Sqn.
While the AEO and AEOp had virtually displaced the air signaller by the early 1970s, this still left a gap in the range of aircrew categories. Although the Douglas Committee of 1945 had rejected the idea of special duties operators being recognised as a discrete aircrew category (see page 270), the problem had not gone away. The post-war RAF maintained an airborne intelligence gathering capability and this had been significantly enhanced during the late 1950s by the acquisition of Canberras and Comets which were flown by No 51 Sqn.
The status of some of the Special Operators who flew with No 51 Sqn, mostly in Comet C.2(R)s like this one, XK655, was problematical until 1969 when the obsolete category of the air signaller was revitalised permitting them to be remustered as aircrew. (MAP)
The crews of these aeroplanes, particularly the latter, included a number of ‘Special Operators’, mostly air signallers (later AEOps), who were concerned with ELINT (Electronic Intelligence – the technical characteristics of transmitted signals) and attended appropriate specialised training courses at Watton.37 Among them, however, there was a group of men who were specifically concerned with COMINT (Communications Intelligence – monitoring the content of messages). They were actually ground tradesmen, ROVs (Radio Operators Voice), who, after attending the Joint Services Language School at North Luffenham and inhouse indoctrination on the squadron, flew as acting sergeants, but who wore no flying badge and drew only crew pay calculated on a daily basis.
Towards the end of the 1960s, perhaps motivated by the prospect of an anticipated upgrade from Comets to Nimrods, an attempt was made to resolve the anomalous position of the linguists. With the campaign being led by No 51 Sqn’s OC C Flt, Sqn Ldr P C Grayland, it was argued that, because they carried out their duties in an airborne environment, it followed that they really ought to be recognised as aircrew, which would automatically entitle them to draw flying pay.
The problem was that they could not be shoehorned into any of the current aircrew categories. Since the ‘S’ badge was no longer being awarded, however, this provided a convenient solution and, after the obligatory ritual arguments with the Treasury, it was agreed to reinstate, on a strictly limited basis, solely to satisfy the peculiar requirements of No 51 Sqn, the redundant category of the air signaller. This required an increased degree of formality, however, as the change from ground to air duties now involved a remustering process. The first batch of linguists to be categorised as air signallers was recognised as such at a ceremony conducted at Wyton in October 1969.38 While this was a relatively minor event in air force terms, it was of some significance within the microcosm of the recon-aissance community, yet no one seems to have been moved to remark on it at the time.39 The first recorded reference to this change in manning policy appears to have been in No 51 Sqn’s ORB which, from July 1970 onwards, replaces the traditional ‘Special Operator’ with ‘Air Signallers (RC)’ when listing the members of a crew.40
Nevertheless, since these men had not attended a recognised aircrew course, they had been awarded their ‘S’ badges, without having ‘successfully completed a prescribed course of flying training’ (as specifically required by QR 727) which gave rise to some niggling misgivings over the status of this small band of somewhat ad hoc aviators.
To overcome some of the reservations that were being expressed, from 1978 onwards prospective air signallers were required to attend a short squadron-run survival course. In 1979 a formal selection board procedure was introduced and the survival course was extended to a week. While this sufficed for the next ten years, the perception persisted that No 51 Sqn’s, now unique, breed of air signallers were not ‘real’ aircrew. This inevitably caused some friction within the squadron itself, where ‘instant’ air signallers flew alongside formally trained AEOps. For the signallers to be recognised by their peers it would be necessary for them to attend the demanding initial training course that had to be passed by all other airmen aircrew (see page 326). Negotiations began in 1989 and No 51 Sqn’s protégés, were soon being required to clear this hurdle before embarking on the specialist phase of training, leading to the award of an ‘S’ badge, responsibility for co-ordinating all of the latter remaining with the squadron and its controlling authority.41
Since No 51 Sqn was the sole sponsor of air signallers for many years, the numbers involved were very small. Nevertheless, there was still one last barrier which needed to be overcome and this fell in June 1991 when Sgt Sue Rosie became the first woman ever to be awarded an ‘S’ badge.
________________________
1 This provision had been specifically included within the 1946 Aircrew Scheme at para 3(b) of AMO A.492/1946.
2 AIR2/4692. Minutes of a meeting chaired by the Director of the Meteorological Office on 7 May 1947.
3 Ibid. Memorandum from DNav, Air Cdre N H D’Aeth, to DCAS, Air Mshl Sir Hugh Walmsley, on Air Ministry file C.28040, summarising the situation as at 1 November 1948.
4 Although a pilot was awarded his flying badge on completion of his advanced flying training course, in order to retain it, all subsequent role-related and/or type conversion courses had to be passed and a period of productive service completed. Similar conditions applied to the permanent retention of the badges worn by all other aircrew categories. Those pilots who were being seconded to meteorological duties who had never reached a squadron, were therefore, at least notionally, at risk of having their ‘wings’ clipped. On the other hand, it would seem that some of the pilots involved were allowed to log time, actually flown as ‘Met men’, as second-pilot hours. This created the impression that they were still in the flying game, a subterfuge in which a system with in-built sympathies towards pilots was perhaps content to collude; see a letter from one such, B Alborough, published in the autumn 1988 edition of Intercom.
5 AMO A. 152/1950 of 2 March.
6 AIR29/1366. ORB for the Combined Selection Centre.
7 AMO A.202/1951 of 12 April.
8 The last man to wear an ‘M’ badge was Wg Cdr B D Tanner, who left the Service in June 1984. Having qualified as an air meteorological observer at Aldergrove in June 1957, he had flown 1,800 hours as a National Service sergeant before being discharged in 1959 prior to being commissioned as an air traffic controller in 1960.
9 AIR2/8297. A course, structured as three twenty-week phases for up to 252 cadets, was outlined in Air Ministry letter A.895137/773/DDOP of 4 September 1947. The situation would appear to have been rather fluid, however, as HQ Technical Training Command’s ORB (AIR24/2028), quoting Air Ministry letter A.928647/DDTS of 10 September, gives the phase lengths as twenty, twenty-four and sixteen, for up to 300 cadets.
10 AIR29/1851. In its ORB for April 1947, No 4 RS notes that, the necessary instructional accommodation having finally been completed, refresher training for an anticipated total of 300 signallers had begun at Swanton Morley with intakes running at about twenty per week.
11 Several variations on the theme of the title of this course crop up in contemporary documents, eg the Signaller B (War) Long Course and the Signaller B (W/T) Course; the shortest version is used here. The ‘B’ incidentally, reflected the A/B grading system introduced for the post-war SEG categories (see page 279).
12 AIR24/2029. The decision to withdraw the Signaller B Course with effect from 1 January 1949 is noted in HQ Technical Training Command ORB for December 1948.
13 AIR25/1159. Course details were outlined in HQ Technical Training Command letter TT/1757/Plans of 28 September 1948.
14 AIR10/5059. The sixty-week signaller training syllabus was published as AP3211 in November 1949.
15 AIR24/1795. To deal with the trickle of signallers already within the system, the minutes of SASO HQ Flying Training Command’s Conference of 6 June 1947 noted that No 7 (sic – it had actually been renumbered as No 2) ANS at Bishop’s Court, later Middleton St George, had been tasked with providing facilities for up to forty at a time. It later became clear that this commitment would not involve ‘instruction’ against a formal syllabus, the aim simply being to provide some 30 hours of practical air experience.
16 AIR20/9060. The projected training sequence for signallers, along with those for engineers and gunners, was summarised for the enlightenment of the Post War Manning Committee in Air Ministry memorandum PWPP (48)12 dated 8 April 1948.
17 AIR24/2029. The target figure of 250 ex-signallers and the adjustments to the syllabus are noted in Technical Training Command’s ORB for April and May 1949.
18 AIR24/2052. Minutes of AOCinC Transport Command’s Staff Conference of 10 July 1950.
19 AIR20/9060. Memo, dated 21 September 1950, raised by Sqn Ldr R N G Allen as DP2(b) tabulating global manning levels for all SEG categories as at 1 September 1950.
20 AIR24/2032. A paper, TT/26875/Air Sigs of 31 August 1948, sets out HQ Technical Training Command’s case for retaining responsibility for the training of signallers.
21 AIR29/1851. A snapshot of the scale of the enterprise at No 4 RS is provided by its ORB for January 1951. At that time it had: nine commissioned and two SNCO navigators attending W/T courses (a precondition for No 237 OCU’s photo-reconnaissance Mosquito course); one air gunner (the last of a batch of ten) being retrained as a signaller; two commissioned and six airmen aircrew air signallers attending Instructors Courses; sixteen National Service and 279 direct entrant cadets on all-through courses. Of these, fifteen of the cadets and five of the qualified signallers were suspended from training during the month.
22 AIR6/118. Conclusions of Air Council Standing Committee Meeting SC 14(55) held on 6 June 1955.
23 AIR6/113. Jointly sponsored by AMP (Air Chf Mshl Sir Francis Fogarty) and DCAS (Air Mshl Sir Thomas Pike), a summary of the Air Council Standing Committee’s deliberations and its consequent recommendation was submitted to the Air Council as AC(55)52 of 2 November 1955.
24 AMO A.54/1956 of 8 March.
25 AMO A.18/1957 of 9 January. The design of the ‘AE’ badge had actually been approved a year before when HM Queen Elizabeth II had endorsed Queen’s Order 767 on 10 January 1956 (AIR30/290).
26 AIR25/1584. A copy of the 1957 AEO Course syllabus is appended to HQ 25 Gp’s ORB.
27 For instance, in 1956 FSgt A Van Geersdaele and Sgts E Ravenscroft, J Chivers, J C Pagler, R W G Peck and O M J Kendrick flew as air signallers with No 207 Sqn. Similarly, No 214 Sqn’s early crews included MSig E C Brown and Sgts M J Frost and P G Game.
Incidentally, a scarcity of suitable officers in the early days of the V-Force meant that NCOs were also employed as navigators, eg FSgt G W E Foster with No 207 Sqn, MNav C G Ross and FSgts A Hildred, W Kerans and N J Spear with No 214 Sqn (all Valiants), FSgt J James with No 83 Sqn (Vulcans) and as late as 1963, MNav A Stringer was flying in the Victor B.2s of No 139 Sqn.
28 AMO A.280/1956 of 14 November.
29 While 20 wpm was the rate required to graduate from training, most operators would work up to 22s, 25s and some even to 30s, although, in practice, routine communication work was often actually conducted at 16s. Indeed, notwithstanding its decreasing significance, AEOs/AEOps were still being trained to handle Morse at 16 wpm until well into the 1980s.
30 AMO A.2/1957 of 9 January.
31 AMO A.220/1959 of 2 September.
32 AIR2/15371. Noted in Memo C.93434/57/ADT(Plans) dated 18 September 1959.
33 AIR6/134. The proposal, as originally submitted to the Air Council Standing Committee by AMP, Air Mshl Sir Walter Cheshire, in his SC(62)23 of 3 July 1962, had envisaged the new trade being designated as the Air Signaller (Air Electronics).
34 AMO N.894/1962 of 5 December as amplified by AMO A.6/1963 of 2 January.
35 An extension of its task had led to the unit’s title being expanded to become the Air Electronics and Air Engineers School (AE&AES) with effect from 30 January 1967.
36 Since 2003 the categories of the AEO and AEOp have been subsumed into those of the WSO and WSOp (see page 351), the erstwhile ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ men initially being more formally categorised as WSOp(ACO) and WSOp(EW) respectively (the suffixes reflecting Acoustic Operator and Electronic Warfare). At the time of their introduction it took forty-six weeks to train a WSOp(ACO) and fifty-five to produce a WSOp(EW).
37 Originally run by the Central Signals Establishment, when it closed, these courses were taken over by the residual Electronic Warfare Support Wing (later Unit).
38 The first five ‘voice operators’ to become air signallers were Sgts D Underwood, H Norman, I Fisher, M Anderson and J Stevenson.
39 So far as this writer has been able to establish, there is no mention of the award of these first badges, or of the negotiations that led to it, in the ORBs raised by No 51 Sqn or RAF Wyton (or in the station’s monthly magazine, The Wyton Eye) or by their controlling authority, the Central Reconnaissance Establishment.
40 The ‘RC’ stood for Radio Calibration, presumably in the interests of spreading disinformation, since the squadron’s role did not actually involve calibration.
41 Since No 51 Sqn tends to operate under a cloak of secrecy, archival correspondence related to this unique unit is relatively sparse. Much of this account of the reinstatement of the air signaller, and the associated ‘S’ badge, has therefore been drawn from anecdotal, rather than documentary, sources, and Keith Ford’s Swift and Sure (1997). The only concrete evidence unearthed to date being the ORB for July 1970 (AIR27/3127) which reflects the change of designation within the composition of crews.