1950-70. The background to aircrew commissioning policy.
Before summarising the later changes in post-war aircrew commissioning policy, it may be helpful to examine some aspects of the background against which they were made.
The first point concerns the changing perception of the function of an aircrew officer. While the introduction of the RAF’s all-officer approach in 1950 had gone some way towards solving the problems associated with the provision of pilots and navigators, it had created another. The RAF was now faced with a situation which it had been specifically trying to avoid ever since 1945. It was having to sponsor relatively large numbers of officers, most of whom would never actually command anything. This was inevitable, however, as the experience of WW II had shown quite clearly. Wartime aircrew had generally been too preoccupied with their primary duties to exercise any realistic measure of direct control over bodies of airmen and, as a result, ground branch officers, particularly engineers, had become the RAF’s real man managers.
Furthermore, during WW II it had become increasingly common for administrative and technical personnel to be pooled.1 Squadrons were no longer the largely self-sufficient entities of yesteryear. In many cases, the significance of a squadron number plate had been reduced to little more than a convenient label by which to identify a particular group of aircrew. These aircrew were supported by a variety of autonomous servicing echelons and/or station-sponsored, common-user organisations with which they frequently had little direct contact. The cost of this development in terms of morale was significant, but it was also unquantifiable and therefore weighed little in the balance when compared to the measurable gains in efficiency, flexibility and economy (but mostly economy) that were conferred by centralisation.
This trend continued after the war, now with aircraft, as well as people, often being pooled, and even where it did not, aircrew, serving on squadrons and working irregular hours, often found it difficult to establish any kind of worthwhile relationship with airmen who often tended to work shifts.2 Nevertheless, the RAF took many years to reconcile itself to the realities of this situation and it occasionally attempted to devise ways of involving junior aircrew officers in the administration and welfare of airmen. While well-intentioned, these patently artificial constructs generally served only to confuse the issue by diluting the authority of the officers of ground branches who were really in charge. As outlined below, it was 1970 before the Air Force finally came to terms with the fact that it was simply impractical to keep on pretending that the function of a contemporary aircrew officer was the same as that of his predecessor of forty years earlier.
The second point concerns the way in which aircrew officers were employed. In a major constitutional change implemented at the end of 1954, the General Duties Branch (Ground Section) was established, absorbing the Aircraft Control and Fighter Control Branches in the process.3 Although these branches, and some of the other functions that were affected, involved many specialist officers who had little or no experience of flying, they had also provided employment for large numbers of aircrew officers. Indeed it was the declared intention when the GD Ground Branch was instituted that its duties should ‘eventually be undertaken mainly by aircrew officers between flying tours and after permanent withdrawal from flying duties’ along with Branch Officers4 commissioned from the appropriate ground trades.5 These provisions aside, many purely administrative appointments, having no direct connection with flying whatsoever, continued to be filled by aircrew, particularly career officers who were ‘broadening their horizons’.
During the 1960s, serious questions began to be raised over the viability of this traditional approach to running the Air Force, one major concern being the recruiting situation, which meant that there simply were not enough aircrew. While this alone provided an argument for changing employment patterns, it was made even more persuasive by the rapidly escalating cost of training which made it increasingly undesirable to have expensive aircrew working on the ground. To put it another way, it was preferable to use people recruited for the purpose, because they were cheaper to train, did not draw flying pay and, as they were professional specialists, they would probably better at it (whatever ‘it’ was) than a misemployed GD officer.
1953-60. Changes in attitude towards the relationship between flying pay and flying currency.
The issue of flying pay was another straw in the wind which was symptomatic of changing attitudes towards aircrew. It was a long established convention, going right back to 1913 that pilots should keep themselves current. This rule was relaxed in 1916 (see page 272) but it was soon reinstated in the peacetime air force. By 1928 the rules stated that: ‘Whatever the nature of his employment, every officer of the general duties branch, up to and including the rank of group captain […] is required to keep himself in regular flying practice on air force aircraft.’6 Although confined to pilots at the time, as members of the GD Branch, this principle would have automatically embraced other aircrew categories as they were introduced.
By 1953 the rules had been moderated a little. The original text was unchanged from 1928 but a clause had been added which read, ‘unless it can be shown clearly that the nature of his duties makes it impracticable’ while aircrew other than pilots were now ‘to take every opportunity of practising their crew duties in the air.’7 Although these legal loopholes existed, they were quite strictly policed. Thus an officer serving on the staff of the Air Attaché in some minor South American republic, without any access to RAF aircraft, might have been able to invoke this get-out clause, the expectation was that, for the vast majority of aircrew, continuing to draw flying pay was conditional upon their getting airborne once in a while. This was made very clear by periodic statements such as this one, from 1951: ‘The Air Council have decided that flying pay should also be withheld from (an officer or airmen) who […] has failed to keep himself in flying practice.’8
With the rundown of the Reserve Flying Schools, and the consequent reduction in the availability of their Chipmunks (see pages 294-295), the progressive withdrawal of Oxfords and Ansons from Station Flights, and a policy decision to the effect that ‘communications flights will no longer take account of any requirement for continuation flying’9 by the end of the 1950s it was becoming increasingly difficult to find a convenient aeroplane on which to keep one’s hand in. This could lead to subterfuge, such as half-a-dozen navigators all simultaneously logging flight time in a Hastings on its way to Malta, and there was a significant financial factor too. If, for instance, a deskbound and rusty group captain, who had flown Mosquitos fifteen years earlier, borrowed a Canberra for a quick trip and wrote it off, the cost would probably have exceeded the cumulative annual flying pay of all aircrew currently serving on ground tours.
At the time, the primary concern was the potential impact on an officer’s career if he were unable to fly while on a ground tour. This situation was formally acknowledged in 1960 when the guidance on completion of a Form 1369 (the Annual Confidential Report on an officer’s performance) was amended to permit an officer ‘who has had no opportunity or facilities for flying while serving in a nonflying appointment’ to enter ‘not applicable’ in the space provided to record flying hours.10 This was the thin end of yet another wedge and from then on, while aircrew on ground tours continued to be encouraged to keep in practice, it was no longer considered essential that they should do so.
In 1959, in view of the progressive closure of Station Flights and the imminent withdrawal of the Anson, the dwindling numbers of Communications Flights were relieved of their obligation to provide flight time for aircrew on ground tours. This one, a C.19, was with HQ 13 Gp Comm Flt in 1960. (R C Sturtivant)
To put it another way, if the RAF wanted someone to fly, it was no longer the individual’s responsibility to find an aeroplane; it was now up to the Service to provide him with one. From there, it followed automatically that flying pay would be paid so long as an individual was medically fit and available for posting to a flying appointment.
Aircrew continued to serve on ground duties from time to time, of course, but less frequently and, following the Hodgkinson Report (see pages 335-36), the practice was largely discontinued after 1970. That is not to say that aircrew were subsequently employed exclusively on flying duties but that, wherever possible, their ground tours would be in app-ointments closely related to flying, for instance training or the planning, direction and monitoring of operations, and not as OC Administrative Wing, OC Station Services Squadron or as the Station Adjutant, as had been commonplace in the past.
1956 onward. The ‘comparable careers’ policy and the Cranwell issue.
Meanwhile, their presence at Cranwell having finally been secured in 1956 (see page 293), it is of some interest to consider how the scheme was being implemented two years later. In the course of routine forward planning, a study of pilot and navigator intakes was carried out in 1958. At that time the projected front line strength of the RAF of 1970 was expected to amount to some 520 aeroplanes. It was calculated that to man these aircraft, to fill the associated staff and non-operational flying appointments and to sustain the training system would require between 2,500 and 2,800 pilots and 1,300 to 1,350 navigators. Allowing for wastage over the intervening years, it was calculated that to provide these the Service would need to recruit annual intakes of 456 pilots and 224 navigators, a ratio of almost exactly 2:1. The figures showed that ninety-six of each year’s pilot intake would enter through Cranwell. In view of the RAF’s professed commitment to comparable careers, it followed that the ninety-six Cranwellian pilots should be accompanied by forty-eight navigators. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), the calculations made provision for only fourteen.11
In June 1949 the Air Council finally decided to admit navigators to Cranwell, but it is symptomatic of the enthusiasm with which it embraced this prospect that it was January 1956 before that decision was actually implemented, the 74th Entry being, the first to include any. Nevertheless, this development meant that the RAF College eventually acquired a number of Varsitys, like WF392 photographed in 1959 (above – MAPA and Valettas, like WJ461, which is wearing the later ‘day-glo’ colour scheme of the early 1960s (below – R C Sturtivantλ Both are sporting the College’s distinctive blue fuselage band.
These figures may not have been quite as outrageous as they might at first appear, because of the ‘allowance for wastage’ factor. Although the paper did not include specific details, it is reasonable to assume that contemporary performance in flying training will have been taken into account. This would have suggested that some 25% of both pilots and navigators could be expected to fail and that about half of the unsuccessful pilots might be recycled to become navigators. From the intake of ninety-six plus fourteen, therefore, it would be reasonable to anticipate an output of seventy-two plus twenty-three. Even so, this still represented a pilot:navigator ratio of 3-1:1, compared to the air force wide 2:1, leaving navigators still seriously under-represented among the select group of officers whose personal files carried the prestigious ‘made in Cranwell’ stamp.
Although these calculations might be regarded as betraying a certain lack of enthusiasm for the RAF’s proclaimed comparable careers policy, we should bear in mind that they were merely the paper projections of a planner. In reality, the situation was far worse. Between December 1958 and March 1973 (the output dates of the 74th and 101st Entries, the first and last to include navigators) 931 pilots graduated from Cranwell so there ought to have been about 465 navigators. In fact, there were only 149, a ratio of only 6·25:1, less than a third of what ‘comparability’ would have led one to expect.12
Meanwhile, in 1960, the Air Council had been moved to announce, once again, that ‘all navigators have career prospects comparable with those of pilots holding the same type of commission.’13 Why did the RAF find it necessary to keep on repeating this mantra? Perhaps it was to encourage navigators to have faith in a truth which some were still finding it difficult to accept. After all, the average navigator, surveying the Air Force of 1960, would still have been hard-pressed to see much concrete evidence of all the equality that was supposed to have been about since 1948 (or, it could even be argued, since 1940 – see page 189).
While obvious signs were still scarce, the equality really was there, even if it did seem to be taking a long time to show itself. This was practically unavoidable, because it was bound to take something like twenty years for a twenty-year old recruit, even a ‘fast runner’, to achieve the rank of group captain and thus begin to get his head far enough above the parapet for his contemporaries to be able to see him. It must be remembered, of course, that there were no commissioned navigators (observers) until 1940, so one could not realistically expect to see many of them begin to attain high ranks until 1960 at the earliest. This is not to say that no navigators had been promoted or been appointed to command squadrons, but those who had had been men of a distinctly earlier, and therefore, ‘different’ generation, wartime veterans with rows of campaign medals.14
Nevertheless, post-war navigators did start to make the grade during the 1960s and by the mid-1970s they were filling increasingly influential staff appointments and beginning to command squadrons, and even stations,15 in significant numbers. In terms of rank, for instance, the spring 1976 edition of the Air Force List shows that of 643 GD wing commanders, 167 (26%) were navigators (there was, incidentally, also a single AEO plus a solitary air signaller who had yet to convert to the new electronic faith). While this was still some way short of the 2:1 proportions that would have been necessary to reflect true comparability, it clearly represented reasonable progress. Navigators had yet to make their mark at the next level up, however, pilots still constituting 83% of the 250 listed group captains.
By the 1980s individual navigators were occasionally managing to penetrate the innermost circles of the air establishment but there was, and still is, a significant imbalance in favour of pilots at the highest levels of the Service.16 This was almost inevitable, because the RAF employs more pilots than all other aircrew categories put together. Notwithstanding this fact, however, compared to navigators, pilots were (and they still are) over-represented in the upper reaches of the hierarchy.
1956-70. Changes in commissioning policy.
Two major reviews of the terms and conditions under which officers served were undertaken during 1956-57 but these resulted in only one significant development. The GD Branch was divided into two lists, the General List, which was confined to officers serving on engagements offering full careers, and the Supplementary (Flying) List for the rest.17 The first group comprised officers serving on what used to be called ‘permanent commissions’, the second embraced officers serving on shorter engagements, long engagements with limited promotion prospects or under ‘branch’ terms.
Within certain constraints, provision was made for officers to migrate from one list to the other. For instance, a Supplementary List officer, who would not normally expect to progress beyond flight lieutenant rank, selected for further promotion would be transferred to the General List. These arrangements were implemented in January 1958 and two years later the lengths of the most common forms of engagement were standardised at service to age 55 for General List officers and age 38 (or sixteen years of service – the so-called ‘38/16 point’) for the rest, an appropriate pension (strictly speaking ‘retired pay’) being payable in either case.18
Despite these improvements, manning continued to cause concern, as did the ever rising costs of training. In an effort to solve these problems, in 1965 AMP, Air Chf Mshl Sir David Lee, turned once again to the concept of longevity. He argued that the manpower shortfall could be made up, with the added bonus of a corresponding reduction in ab initio training costs, if a substantial proportion (his suggested target was 40%) of aircrew could be persuaded to continue flying beyond their 38/16 points. To provide a suitable carrot, it was accepted that the chances of promotion to squadron leader would have to be substantially improved, the annual quota of Supplementary List officers being promoted to that rank subsequently being raised from four to sixty, up to a total of 750.19 Unfortunately, this failed to produce the anticipated result, mainly because there were insufficient squadron leader appointments in which these officers could be employed.
Still faced with persistent undermanning, AMP took the problem back to the Board at the end of 1967. In order to expedite the programme, he sought agreement to his doubling the annual squadron leader promotion quota, thus halving the time required to reach the ceiling of 750. He also proposed to identify specific additional posts which could reasonably be filled by squadron leaders. As a first step, it was suggested that all Comet and VC10 captains should be squadron leaders. All of this was agreed.20
Predictably, and as the Board had feared, the decision to promote automatically pilots who just happened to have been posted to fly jet transports was widely perceived to have been divisive by all other pilots (and navigators), but especially those who flew heavy aircraft in other roles. This gave rise to the (apocryphal?) tale that, on being introduced to a squadron leader for the first time, those who considered that they had been discriminated against might open the conversation with a question along the lines of, ‘Are you a real squadron leader, or do you just fly Comets?’ Beyond this, to absorb the flood of newly promoted senior officers the status of many of the lesser executive posts at squadron level, eg that of the Nav Leader, was progressively raised so that a typical squadron operating multi-seat aeroplanes and commanded by a wing commander eventually had an establishment of four or five squadron leaders in place of the previous one.
Even so, retention rates continued to fall below the desired level and it became necessary to introduce ‘Specialist Aircrew’. Resembling, in some respects, the terms available to Branch Officers, selected experienced aircrew, who were considered to be professionally competent but who were not regarded as good promotion prospects, were offered further service at enhanced rates of pay. These terms were introduced on 1 April 1970.21 Thereafter, all other things being equal, it was possible for a flight lieutenant to remain in the cockpit as specialist aircrew until the age of 55, his emoluments being roughly the same as those of a squadron leader. There was some prospect of promotion to squadron leader as specialist aircrew which provided an increase in status without, in most cases, obliging the individual to take on the kind of executive or supervisory responsibilities traditionally associated with that rank. Many of the squadron leaders who had recently been promoted on the Supplementary List were transferred to specialist aircrew terms in that rank while retaining some prospects of promotion to wing commander.
1960-70. The end of the traditional Cranwell cadetship.
In the meantime, the significant changes which had been occurring within the structure of British society, and which became increasingly apparent during the 1960s, had been forcing the RAF (and the other Services) to reappraise its approach towards the recruiting and training of officers. Traditionally, the Service academies and colleges, Dartmouth, Sandhurst, Cranwell, Henlow22 and others, had drawn their intakes from that slice of the population immediately below the rather less than 5% who, according to the Robbins Report,23 went to university, many of whom would probably have attended a Public School.
The expansion of university education meant that in the 1960s places were becoming increasingly available to people who would previously have been expected to take up cadetships. As a result, the RAF had begun to offer increasing numbers of university graduates permanent commissions on terms similar to those which had previously been reserved, almost exclusively, for Cranwellians. It took time for this trend to influence recruiting but the scale of its early impact can be judged from the fact that the proportion of cadets entering Cranwell from Headmasters Conference schools plummeted from 63·8% in 1958 (much the same as it had been before the war) to a mere 21% in 1962.24
The perennial problem of navigator manning obliged the Service to continue to launch periodic campaigns specifically aimed at recruiting them. This one dates from 1973.
The ideal solution, from the point of view of the Services, would have been to have had their colleges recognised as degree-awarding institutions, which would probably have permitted them to continue to attract their traditional intakes. In all probability, after a little fine-tuning, the intellectual demands of the curricula on offer at the time would have been more than enough to satisfy today’s arbiter on such matters, the Open University. But its 1960s predecessor, the Council for National Academic Awards, used to be far more rigorous and, at the crucial time, military training was considered to contain too little of academic substance to impress.
Nevertheless, while the ambitious young men of the 1960s were understandably disinclined to forego the option of acquiring a university education, many of them were still keen on pursuing a career in one of the Services. The difference was that they would now be joining as relatively mature 22 year-old graduates, with ideas of their own, rather than as malleable 18 year-olds, still amenable to being pressed into a mould. Furthermore, in view of their age on entry, it would be impractical to expect them to spend two or three further years as cadets before entering productive service.
The upshot of all this was that, with some regret, the cadetship schemes had to be abandoned and, in order to ensure that it recruited its fair share of university-educated men, many of whom were already being sponsored by the Service, the RAF was obliged to offer them the prospect of a full career on the General List and a rate of pay which went some way towards recognising the three years that they had already spent studying. Once again, the indissoluble link between pay and rank, to which reference has already been made, dictated that these men would have to be given substantial antedates of seniority. In fact, these antedates were such that many graduates were flight lieutenants long before they had finished their training.
The RAF College’s last cadet entry (the 101st) began its 2½-year course in September 1970; the next intake would comprise university graduates who were required to stay at Cranwell for only eleven weeks. In the meantime, all officers joining on less favoured terms continued to gain their commissions via a four-month stint at the Officer Cadet Training Unit at Henlow.25
The demise of the traditional Promotion Exams.
University graduates had been receiving preferential treatment, including long term engagements, for some time, but the scale of the programme had not been large enough to attract significant comment.26 From the mid-1960s, however, the numbers involved increased markedly and ‘instant’ flight lieutenants proliferated. The granting of these (so-called) ‘Green Shield Stamp’ commissions created some resentment among non-university entrants who could expect to serve for almost six years (which would have included a full flying tour) before attaining the rank of flight lieutenant. While hardly ideal, this development was virtually unavoidable and the initial discontent slowly faded as the practice became increasingly widespread.
The evolving pattern of officer recruiting had another knock-on effect. It had long been the case that, in addition to serving his time, before he could become a flight lieutenant, an officer had first to pass the associated Promotion Examination ‘B’.27 The practice of commissioning officers virtually as flight lieutenants from the outset meant that they avoided that hurdle. Consequently, in addition to lacking practical experience, this new generation of junior officers had little awareness of the air force law and lore which their predecessors had been obliged to acquire through preexamination study. Since increasing numbers were bypassing the examination, however, it was eventually abandoned so that no junior officers were required to do much studying until they reached their late 20s when they began to prepare themselves for promotion to squadron leader, which required them to pass the ‘C’ Exam. The inevitable result was to devalue the rank of flight lieutenant so that, among aircrew at least, it became little more than a pay grade.
This downward trend was to continue. The substantial increase in the number of squadron leaders agreed in 1965, the appointment of specialist aircrew as such from 1970 and the eventual abolition of the related Promotion Examination ‘C’ meant that that rank was also in danger of becoming a mere pay grade by the 1980s. All of this would, no doubt, have been a considerable disappointment to Sir John Slessor who had been at pains to counter this specific tendency when he had been attempting to define the shape of the post-war air force in 1945 (see page 277).
1969. The Hodgkinson Report.
The changes in the ways in which the RAF was recruiting and training its officers were accompanied by a major restructuring of the entire officer corps. This was brought about as a consequence of yet another review, commissioned by AMP, Air Mshl Sir Andrew Humphrey, in July 1968. It was conducted by AVM W D Hodgkinson, who submitted his report almost a year later. He drew a number of conclusions, the most important of which may be summarised as follows.28
a. The RAF was considered to lack professionalism in many of its operational and administrative functions. This deficiency was a direct result of its having adhered to the Trenchardian principle of GD officers, ie pilots (and now navigators), being capable of undertaking a variety of (to them) secondary tasks long after WW II had clearly demonstrated that this concept was outmoded.
b. It followed from the above: that aircrew should concentrate on the increasingly demanding job of flying; that the RAF should employ specialists in all fields of activity; and that the career prospects of ground branch officers should be improved in order to attract high-quality applicants.
c. Another unfortunate consequence of Trenchard’s legacy was that GD officers (all still, in effect, pilots) had exclusive control over the higher direction of the Service. This was not a satisfactory situation because, as pilots, they simply lacked expertise in fields which were critical to the efficient conduct of air operations.
d. Like Cranwell cadetships, the graduate entry scheme was considered to be fundamentally flawed. Both systems conferred special privileges on people who were as yet unknown quantities, at the expense of those who had demonstrated their abilities in service.
In December 1969 the Air Force Board decided to implement most of Hodgkinson’s recommendations.29 This had far-reaching consequences but, in the specific context of this narrative, it led to two major changes in policy. First, with a few specific exceptions, the practice of misemploying aircrew in administrative appointments was progressively phased out. Secondly, the existing two-list (ie General and Supplementary) system, which had effectively divided officers into ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’, virtually from the day they joined up, was superseded by a single list which offered all officers an equal chance of consideration for promotion.30 To reflect this, it was no longer appropriate to segregate the graduate entry from the rest and eventually, in December 1978, the RAF introduced a ‘single gate’ officer training scheme under which (almost31) all prospective officers, regardless of age, sex, qualifications and ultimate branch, attended a common initial training course at Cranwell.
1956-86. A common gradation list for Air Officers.
In this context it is interesting to consider one of the observations raised by the Hodgkinson Report of 1969, that it was inappropriate that so many of the RAF’s most senior officers should be pilots. This implied that more of them should be drawn from branches other than GD which, in turn, pointed towards some sort of common gradation list for air officers. This was not a new idea; indeed it had not even been new in 1956 when it had first been given serious consideration. At that time, a committee, which had been investigating such matters under the chairmanship of Air Mshl Sir Charles Guest, had decided not to recommend its adoption, stating that:32
‘What seems to us important is not that the names of Air Officers should be in a common list, but that the senior appointments of the Service should be allocated to the best man for the job, taking into account ability and experience, but ignoring the Branch to which an officer happens to belong.’
Needless to say, the Air Council was content to endorse this relatively low key approach. A cynic might consider that this was because it would, in effect, permit a generation of senior pilots, who had been brought up to believe that, with very few exceptions, pilots were the best men for the job (whatever it was) to continue to rule the roost. This would probably be unkind, however, as the Council subsequently asked the Inspector General to review the Guest Committee’s recommendations. Finding grass roots support divided between the introduction of a common list and the implementation of Guest’s solution, Air Chf Mshl Sir Walter Dawson chose to endorse the less formal, ‘best man for the job’, approach.33 This was duly implemented, although the Air Council specifically forbore to make any public announcement to the effect that a new policy had been adopted.
The idea resurfaced in 1961 in the course of yet another review of the officer structure, this time conducted by Air Chf Mshl The Earl of Bandon who, inter alia, recommended the introduction of a common list for officers of air rank.34 While this was still a highly controversial proposal, it is evident that, with the passage of time, it was becoming possible to promote the idea more positively. The Air Council was still very nervous about its implications, however, and AMP, Air Mshl Sir Arthur McDonald, was invited to review the Bandon Report and suggest alternative means of implementing its findings. It fell to his successor, Air Mshl Sir Walter Cheshire, to present McDonald’s proposals which modified some of Lord Bandon’s recommendations but continued to advocate a common list.
In subsequent discussion, the uniformed members of the Council were practically unanimous in rejecting this idea, CAS, Air Chf Mshl Sir Thomas Pike, stating that ‘it would have little practical meaning and would be bad for morale as it would make it more obvious than ever that the General Duties officer had better promotion prospects.’ On the other hand, Mr W J Taylor MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, considered that the Service was failing to face up to the fundamental issue raised by the Bandon Report, which was, ‘whether the RAF should continue to consist of a flying élite with technical advisers or alter its organisation radically so as to make full use in higher management of all the skills available.’ He went on to argue that, while leadership was the essential quality, this could, as in commerce and industry, be found among the practitioners of many different professions.35 Despite this spirited opp-osition, however, the Council decided not to introduce a common list, although it did agree to ‘multiple annotation’ where appropriate, ie the identification of selected senior appointments which could be filled by officers from branches other than GD, although, once again, it elected not to make a public announcement to this effect.
From this brief review, it is clear that AVM Hodgkinson had not really been breaking new ground when he brought up the idea again eight years later. Nevertheless, despite its being repeatedly advised that it should introduce a common list for air officers, the Air Force Board could not bring itself to do so until the 1980s. The Air Force List for 1986 was the first to feature all air officers on a single gradation list which appeared under the new heading of the ‘Policy Branches’, finally reflecting an egalitarian philosophy which had first been tentatively mooted thirty years earlier. Thereafter, while certain senior posts would, for obvious reasons, always have to be filled by officers of particular ‘trades’, in general selection for promotion to higher ranks was to be based on merit alone. Theoretically, therefore, it was possible that most air vice-marshals and above might eventually turn out to be navigators – but there was no technical reason why a substantial proportion of them should not be engineers or suppliers.
What happened in practice? While the concept of multiple annotation had been endorsed at the end of 1961 it took a year to decide how it should be implemented. The approach that was eventually adopted was confined to the ‘general list structure of each branch’, ie it was to be predicated on the numbers of ‘career officers’, those currently serving under favoured conditions on long-term engagements (see page 333). Working from that premise, AMP devised a quota system that would see annual promotions to air commodore and from air commodore to air vice-marshal in the ratios of 8:3:1:1 from the GD, Technical, Equipment and Secretarial Branches respectively.36 The Air Force List for April 1962 featured 51 air vice-marshals and 108 air commodores. Applying AMP’s formula, they should have been distributed roughly like this:
The distribution was actually like this:
This represented a tolerable approximation at air commodore level but there was clearly a long way to go to bring the distribution of air vice-marshals into line. It would take several years to adjust that imbalance but, even then, despite the acceptance of a notional degree of meritocracy, the imposition of the quota system had ensured that the GD Branch would continue to dominate the upper reaches of the hierarchy. It goes without saying that, at the time, it will have been taken for granted that, apart from one, or perhaps two, engineers, all officers above the rank of air vice-marshal would always be drawn from the GD Branch (and be pilots).
Since the quota system had been based on the composition of the General List, its foundations will (should) have been seriously disturbed in 1970 when the single list was introduced (see page 336). Since that meant all officers now had the same opportunities for promotion, a post-1970 quota system (if there was one) should have reflected the composition of the entire officer corps, not just the erstwhile favoured few. Furthermore the introduction of the Policy Branches in 1986 had implied the acceptance of an even greater degree of meritocracy. So what was the long-term effect of these evolutionary changes?
By 2000 there had been some re-labelling of the Branches – Technical had become Engineer, Equipment had become Supply and Secretarial was now Administrative. The Air Force List current at the time37 featured 24 air vicemarshals and 70 air commodores (of the branches that we are able to compare, ie omitting the recently introduced Operations Support Branch). If the 1962 formula was still being applied, one would expect the break down to have looked roughly like this:
In fact, it looked like this:
Allowing for the inevitable influence of random factors, such as variations in age, early retirements, quality of intake and the like, the actual distribution of ranks by branch in 2000 was still remarkably close to the 8:3:1:1 of 1962. But should it have been? Adding the eleven 3- and 4-star officers and the 1-star and two 2-stars from Operations Support, the grand total of air officers in 2000 was 108, of which 67 (62%) were drawn from the GD Branch, a number which, since only 43% of the ‘single list’ officer corps was drawn from the GD Branch, was considerably in excess of a statistically predictable result (for a comparison of the relative sizes of the GD and non-GD Branches at the time, see Note 31 to the Epilogue). Moreover, if we look a little closer, we find that fifty-seven of these GD officers were pilots. Only ten were navigators, substantially fewer than one might have expected in view of ‘comparability’ and their considerable numerical representation within the branch. Furthermore, all ten navigators were ‘mere’ air commodores.
Looking a little closer still, we find that, of the total of 108 air officers, all four air chief marshals, six of the seven air marshals and seventeen of the twenty-five air vicemarshals were pilots. Yet forty-two of the seventy-two air commodores were not pilots (thirty-two drawn from branches other than GD plus the ten navigators). In other words, as one climbed the four highest rungs of the RAF’s career ladder, the proportion of non-pilots one was likely to encounter fell progressively from 58% to 32% to 14% to zero. It would seem, therefore, that for all practical purposes, the 1962 quotas were still being applied and that ‘comparability’ actually began, and ended, with air commodores – strictly speaking, it did not even begin with air commodores because pilots were substantially overrepresented even at this level.
There could be many explanations for this curious situation but it is difficult to dismiss the parallel with 1918 (see page 129). It would seem that pilots still had a natural tendency to favour other pilots and that the pilots who still filled all of the most influential positions in the Air Force, automatically selected others of their kind to succeed them. Intentional or not, because of the self-perpetuating nature of such a nepotistic culture, it was likely to take at least fifteen years for change to become apparent. This is because it would take that long for the current generation of pilot air marshals and their heirs apparent, the several generations’-worth of senior pilots who were already being groomed to take their places, to have their turn before much space would become available in the upper echelons of the hierarchy for officers schooled in other disciplines.
Despite this writer’s evident scepticism, however, it would seem that the Service may, at last, actually have embraced the ‘best man for the job’ philosophy with some degree of commitment. While this concept was already supposed to have been applied to air commodores and above for several years, it was announced in 1999 that the entry level to, what we may regard as, ‘the executive’ was to be lowered to wing commander. For obvious practical reasons, many posts would have to continue to be ‘trade annotated’, appointments concerned with the direct supervision (but not necessarily all aspects related to the conduct) of flying, for instance, being reserved for aircrew. But, where specialisation was not a significant consideration, employment opportunities at middle and senior management levels were to be considerably broadened. As the Armed Forces Minister, John Spellar, cautioned at the time, however, (presumably, because of the ‘generation factor’) it was likely to be several years before the impact of this policy would have much tangible effect.38
When the new scheme was finally implemented in 2003, it involved another major restructuring of the officer corps and some significant changes in terminology. Since then there have been five main ‘functional’ branches to which officers up to and including squadron leader rank would be assigned: Flying; Operations Support; Engineer; Supply; and Administrative.39 On attaining the rank of wing commander, all officers, regardless of their specialisation, would be transferred to the General Duties Branch, a label which was now synonymous with the ‘executive’ branch, as it had been for the previous eighty-odd years, although membership was no longer exclusively confined to aircrew which it had also been for most of those same eighty-odd years.
As a footnote, it may be of some interest to compare the air officer situation as outlined above with the position a few years later. The most surprising change is that, despite the inexorably decreasing size of the Air Force, in all respects – numbers of units, aeroplanes and personnel – by mid-2005 there were 116 air officers, eight more than there had been in mid-1999. There had also been some subtle shifts in the composition of the group. Ground branch officers and navigators were now filling seven and four additional posts, respectively, pilots having forfeited three appointments. There were still eleven air chief marshals and air marshals, but all eleven were now pilots.
The continuing reduction in the size of the Air Force, and the consequent changes in its command structure, will have had a considerable additional impact on the shape of the officer corps since 2005. Unfortunately, however, it is no longer possible to draw historical comparisons because the Air Force Board has seen fit to cease publication of the Air Force List, which is to say that a document of public record, that had been published at least annually ever since 1918, has been unavailable to the public since 2007.
2003. A late refinement to commissioning policy and problems with retention.
With only minor alterations, eg the course offered by Cranwell’s Department of Initial Officer Training (reconstituted as the Officer and Aircrew Cadet Training Unit in 2004), has been as short as three months and as long as eight, the Hodgkinson Report of 1969 provided the mould which shaped the RAF’s officer corps for the rest of the century and into the next.
That said, there was one further late innovation which is worthy of mention. The perennial problems of aircrew recruiting and retention had continued to plague the RAF throughout the 1990s and in 2000 a Working Group was set up to examine the problem. It concluded that, although remuneration was not the only reason why aircrew were leaving the Service, it was a factor that could be addressed relatively easily. Extending the model provided by the earlier, and then still current, Branch Officer and Specialist Aircrew schemes, the concept of the Professional Aviator was introduced in 2003. What was significant about this is that, while the earlier arrangements had been based on enhanced rates of pay, under the new scheme pay had specifically ‘been decoupled from rank’.40 This breaking of the pay/rank link which, as previously noted, had always been regarded as being (almost) immutable, permitted the Service to dangle a fairly juicy carrot in front of aircrew approaching their Immediate Pension (aka their ‘38/16’) Points.
Despite this innovation, the Air Force was still facing such a serious manning shortfall that in 2002 it was obliged to introduce Financial Retention Incentives (FRI). Intended to remain in force for no more than five years, the initial FRI scheme involved substantial cash payments, in an attempt to stem the outflow of experienced personnel.41 This initiative was very successful and by September 2002, ie six months after the scheme had been implemented, 1,285 aircrew had accepted an FRI, representing a take-up rate of 89% of those eligible to do so.42
________________________
1 Beginning as early as November 1941 the groundcrew of UK-based fighter squadrons began to be separated from the aircrew and reorganised into numbered servicing echelons. This practice later spread to other commands both at home and overseas. Once the war became more mobile post D-Day there was no guarantee that a servicing echelon would stay with the squadron with which it had originally been associated.
2 This was far from being a new problem. During WW II the Service had openly acknowledged that too many of its wartime (mostly aircrew) officers knew too little about the airmen who served under them. See, for instance, Tee Emm for August 1943.
3 AMO A.219/1954 of 9 September. Other officers absorbed into the new organisation included those concerned with radar supervision, photography, photographic interpretation and balloons. As a result of these changes, the erstwhile Aircraft Control and Fighter Control Branches ceased to exist on 31 December 1955.
4 Originally introduced exclusively for ground branches in 1951 (by AMO A.627/1951 of 1 November), the Branch List was a variation on the theme of permanent commissions. The main purpose of the Branch List was to cater for flight sergeants and warrant officers of ground trades whose age precluded their being commissioned under other arrangements. A branch commission offered a pensionable engagement but carried little realistic prospect of promotion beyond the rank of flight lieutenant, although this was partially compensated for by a preferential pay scale, eg in 1954 a newly promoted Branch List flight lieutenant drew £2/0/6d per day, whereas any other flight lieutenant drew only £1/9/0d (AMO A.70/1954 of 1 April). As a temporary measure, when these arrangements were first introduced it was also possible for officers already serving on extended or short service commissions in ground branches to apply to transfer to branch terms. A year later, the scheme was extended to embrace both aircrew officers already serving on extended or short service commissions and airmen (aircrew) wishing to become officers by, respectively, AMOs A.499/1952 and A.500/1952 of 25 September.
It is perhaps a fine point, but it should be appreciated that, while its absorption into the Supplementary List with effect from the January 1958 Air Force List (see AMO A.362/1957 of 27 November) meant that the Branch List ceased to exist as such, its conditions of service remained so it was still possible for an individual to become a Branch Officer. By this time, however, since extended service and short service commissions (for aircrew) were no longer available, access to a Branch Commission was effectively confined to senior serving airmen.
5 AMO A.1/1955 dated 6 January. Despite this declared intention, the AMO went on to recognise that until sufficient numbers of aircrew and exaircrew became available, it would continue to be necessary to recruit and employ specialist RAF and WRAF officers on short and/or National Service terms.
6 Para 695 of KRs&ACIs, 2nd (1928) Edition which reinforced a similar requirement, previously extending only to wing commanders, at para 662 of the 1924 Edition.
7 Para 678 of KRs&ACIs, 3rd (1953) Edition.
8 AMO A.431/1951 of 2 August.
9 Announced in July 1959, this policy was referred to in memorandum SC(60)13, dated 2 September 1960, submitted to the Air Council Standing Committee by DCAS, AVM P H Dunn (AIR6/130).
10 AMO N.517/1960 of 13 July.
11 AIR6/116. Memorandum AC(58)80 of 2 December 1958 submitted to the Air Council by VCAS, Air Mshl Sir Edmund Hudleston. Having been endorsed in the Conclusions of Air Council Meeting 26(58) held on 18 December, these figures provided the recruiting targets until 1960 when a forecast increase in front line strength meant that they had to be revised sharply upwards. It was the improbability of securing such large numbers of officers that led to the reintroduction of NCO pilots and navigators in 1961 (see page 324-25).
12 Statistics on the output from Cranwell were provided by Jean Buckberry, then the College Librarian and Archivist, by permission of the AOC and Commandant.
13 AMO A.29/1960 dated 10 February.
14 The first navigator to command a post-war squadron was probably Sqn Ldr E D Norris-Smith, OC 23 Sqn 1947-49. Later examples included Sqn Ldr R F B Powell DFC, OC 99 Sqn from July 1954; Sqn Ldr E K Paine, who was appointed OC 206 Sqn in the following December and Sqn Ldr B Moorcroft DSO DFC, a wartime Pathfinder who (incidentally, and quite improperly still sported a flying ‘O’ – as did Powell) was OC 101 Sqn at the time of Suez. By the early 1960s, while never exactly numerous, navigator COs were becoming less remarkable, eg Wg Cdr L F Wolsey was OC 36 Sqn 1960-62, Wg Cdr J H Walton commanded No 25 Sqn 1960-61 and Sqn Ldr M J Dawson was OC 45 Sqn 1961-62. These are merely representative examples; the list is not exhaustive.
15 The first navigator to command an operational flying station was Gp Capt D J Furner who was appointed Station Commander at Scampton in 1968.
16 The first navigator to gain a seat on the Air Force Board was Air Mshl Sir Charles Ness who was Air Member for Personnel in 1980-83, but it would be twenty-eight years before another navigator gained a seat at the top table. He was Air Mshl S Bryant who was appointed AMP in 2009, subsequently retaining his place when, as Air Chf Mshl Sir Simon, he became (the last) AOCinC Air Command a year later.
17 AMO A.362/1957 of 27 November. At the same time the erstwhile GD (Ground) Branch became the Supplementary (Ground) List, but this third element need not concern us here.
18 AMO A.45/1960 of 24 February.
19 AIR6/145. The argument for increasing the number of Supplementary List squadron leaders to 750 (there were only seventeen at the time) was articulated to the Air Force Board Standing Committee in AMP’s memorandum SC(65)22 of 5 July 1965. The idea was subsequently endorsed by the full Air Force Board on 29 July at its meeting 13(65) (AIR6/143).
20 AIR6/160. Air Force Board Conclusions 1(68) of 22 January 1968.
21 DCI(RAF) S60 of 8 April 1970.
22 Having been established at Henlow (by renaming the existing School of Aeronautical Engineering, which had been there since 1938) on 15 August 1947, the RAF Technical College began to offer cadetships five years later (see AMO A.282/1952 of 15 May), No 1 Entry assembling on 29 September 1952. Cadets recruited into the Technical Branch were provided with similar general service training (and subsequent career advantages) to those offered to pilots (and a few others) at its sister college at Cranwell. The institution at Henlow eventually moved to Cranwell where it became an integral part of the Royal Air Force College with effect from 1 January 1966.
23 Higher Education. Report of the Committee appointed by the Prime Minister under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins 1961-63; Cmd 2154.
24 E B Haslam, The History of Royal Air Force Cranwell (1982), p176 and Dr Tony Mansell, ‘Flying start: educational and social factors in the recruitment of pilots of the Royal Air Force in the inter-war years’ published in History of Education, Vol 26, No 1 (1997).
25 Post-war initial officer training for direct entrants and for airmen being commissioned from the ranks had been provided at a variety of locations but by the late 1950s the position had stabilised with No 1 Initial Training School (ITS) at South Cerney handling prospective pilots and navigators and the Officer Cadet Training Unit (OCTU) at Jurby dealing with ground branches and NCO aircrew being commissioned in their current categories. Having spent a period at Feltwell, in October 1965 the OCTU moved to Henlow which was about to be vacated by the RAF Technical College (see Note 22). In the meantime No 1 ITS had been renamed the Aircrew Officers Training School and had moved to Church Fenton in 1968. In May 1969 it too moved to Henlow where it was absorbed into the OCTU. The OCTU’s functions were transferred to the newly established Department of Initial Officer Training at Cranwell in 1978 when the ‘single gate’ entry was instigated.
26 The RAF had offered permanent commissions to graduates throughout the inter-war period and had reinstated this practice when permanent commissions had been reintroduced in 1945.
27 Promotion within the lower commissioned ranks of the RAF was initially based on time, tempered by a degree of selection. AMWO 181 of 19 March 1925 announced that an additional hurdle, a series of promotion examinations, would be introduced in the following year. In future, to be eligible for promotion to flying officer a candidate would have to pass the Promotion Examination ‘A’, to flight lieutenant the ‘B’, and to squadron leader the ‘C’. At the time, these provisions were confined to the GD Branch but similar arrangements were later introduced for stores/equipment officers – the ‘E’ to flight lieutenant and the ‘F’ to squadron leader.
The insatiable demands of the much larger air force of the late 1930s meant that concessions had to be granted, eg AMO A.441/1938 of 1 December permitted flight lieutenants who had not passed the ‘C’ to be made up to squadron leader. On the outbreak of war, promotion examinations were suspended for the duration (AMO A.353/1939 of 6 September). AMO A.822/1948 of 14 October announced the progressive reintroduction of the ‘B’ and ‘C’, which would now be applicable to all branches, not just GD. It had also been intended to reinstate the ‘A’ but this was initially held in abeyance and eventually abandoned without ever being reintroduced. The ‘B’ followed it into oblivion in the 1970s and the ‘C’ in the 1980s.
28 AIR20/12267. The points listed have been extracted from AF/HC/BS/12, dated 1 May 1969, the ‘Hodgkinson Report’.
29 AIR6/173. Conclusions of Air Force Board Meeting 15(69) held on 15 December 1969.
30 DCI(RAF) S60 of 8 April 1970.
31 Prospective officers of the ‘professional’ branches, ie doctors, dentists, lawyers and chaplains, and ex-officers of the RN, Army or RAF, joining/rejoining the Service also pass through Cranwell, but via a relatively short Specialist Entrant and Re-Entrant (SERE) induction course.
32 AIR8/2123. Report of a Committee to Review the Entry and Subsequent Training of Future Permanent Officers in the Royal Air Force, PEC(56)R.1 dated 10 February 1956.
33 Ibid. Inspector General’s Report No 542, IG306 dated 1 October 1956.
34 AIR8/2337. Report on the Officer Structure of the Royal Air Force, dated 1 May 1961.
35 AIR6/131. Conclusions of Air Council Meeting 24(61) held on 21 December 1961.
36 AIR6/132. These quotas were proposed by AMP, Air Chf Mshl Sir Walter Cheshire, in Appendix D to his Note AC(62)38 of 2 November 1962. They were discussed and accepted by the Air Council at its Meeting 17(62) held on 20 December 1962 (AIR6/133).
37 The 2000 edition of the Air Force List actually reflects the position as at 6 July 1999.
38 MOD press release 335/99 dated 15 September 1999.
39 The 2003 edition of the Air Force List (which is notionally correct only to 2 July 2002) was the last to reflect the composition of branches up to the rank of group captain. There were sub-divisions within the new ‘functional’ branches, eg Operations Support embraced Air Traffic Control, Intelligence, Flight Operations, Fighter Control and the RAF Regiment. In addition, there were eight ‘specialist’ branches: Medical; Medical Secretarial; Medical Technician; Dental; Chaplains; Legal; Directors of Music and Princess Mary’s Nursing Service.
40 Para 3c to Annex A to the Administrative Arrangements for the Professional Aviator Pay Spine published by the Air Secretary as PTC/557/12/P&A dated January 2003 .
41 Introduced on 1 April 2002, FRI 1 involved a payment of £30,000, to commissioned aircrew five years before reaching their Immediate Pension Points if they undertook to remain in uniform until then; FRI 2 provided £50,000 for those who agreed to serve for five years beyond their ‘38/16’ point. A similar arrangement (£20,000) was introduced for airmen aircrew with effect from 1 April 2003. These offers were available only for specific periods, not permanently, although the Fourteenth (2007-09) Report of the House of Commons Defence Committee (HC424) makes reference to later FRIs for aircrew of as much as £100,000.
42 Para 2.36 of the Thirty-Second Report of the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body which was presented to Parliament in February 2003 as Cmd 5717.