While observers have long since faded from the RAF scene, because their successors still serve, albeit in rapidly diminishing numbers, it is worth looking back to WW I in an attempt to find some rational explanation for the RFC’s determination to exclude observers from even the lowest levels of the chain of command. Since a lack of regard for aircrew other than pilots was to prevail for so many years within the RAF, we should also consider some of the longterm implications of the RFC’s unfortunate attitude.
Had there really been an anti-observer bias within the RFC and, if so, why?
There had been a gradual, if marginal, improvement in the conditions of service of observers between 1914 and 1918, and there were signs that the situation might have improved significantly had the war been prolonged. It is quite clear, however, that they had never commanded the same respect as contemporary pilots – at least, not in the eyes of the senior officers who wrote the rules.
The nature of the problem appears to have been that the RFC had permitted a natural inclination (for pilots to favour other pilots) to become a de facto policy. Since this policy was bound to influence practice, it inevitably led to the interests of pilots being promoted at the expense of all other aircrew categories. Because of the way in which its generals had stacked the cards, therefore, only pilots were able to win at the RFC’s flying game. This may be an oversimplification but, in essence, it is what had happened.
Whether this unfortunate situation had arisen by accident or by design may be debatable, but what is certain is that Sir Clement Bailhache’s investigations had clearly identified the problem as early as 1916. The RFC’s subsequent failure to implement his Committee’s only specific recommendation relating to observers permitted its discriminatory attitude to become even more deeply entrenched. Once this opportunity had been ignored there was little chance of the system’s ever being put to rights, as the plainly prejudicial practice of restricting the rank of observers to lieutenant ensured that very few spokesmen emerged with the authority to question the status quo or to press the back-seaters’ case.
As suggested above, it is possible that the RFC’s apparent bias against observers was actually a bias in favour of pilots – which is not quite the same thing. Wherever the emphasis lay, however, the outcome would have been the same. Reduced to their essentials, there would appear to have been three possible explanations for the RFC’s attitude.
a. All observers really were inherently inadequate.
b. All pilots were arrogant and ambitious and therefore connived to protect their privileged status.
c. Discriminatory tendencies towards minorities are endemic within any social group and within the RFC this was bound to manifest itself at the expense of the less numerous observers.
The major, and very obvious, flaw in the first of these possibilities is that a substantial proportion of observers subsequently became pilots. They can hardly, therefore, have been incompetent as individuals.
The second proposition has a number of weaknesses. First, since most pilots were very junior officers they wielded insufficient influence to affect matters as remote to them as personnel policy. Secondly, even if they had been able to, since many of them had been observers themselves, they might well have been inclined to be sympathetic, rather than vindictive, towards them. Finally, if pilot-preference really was the dynamic, why was there no significant bias against observers in the RNAS?
The fact that there was no significant anti-observer bias within the RNAS seriously undermines the third argument, that discrimination is inevitable. It is true that the Admiralty had been comparatively slow to realise that it needed professional observers, but once it had, it treated them no differently from its pilots. Since none of the more obvious propositions provides a convincing justification for the RFC’s attitude towards its observers, it is necessary to look for a more subtle explanation.
It is interesting to note that, as is clearly shown by the succession of regulations which they devised, the dismissive attitude towards observers displayed by the upper echelons of the RFC never diminished. This contrasted sharply with what had been happening at the working level. A certain lack of respect for observers may have been apparent in the early days but with the passage of time this had largely faded away. Hubert Griffiths, for instance, writing of his time with No 15 Sqn in 1918, went so far as to describe the pairing of a pilot and observer as being ‘… more binding than that of a marriage. (It) was, I suppose, the most personal relationship that ever existed.’1 This recollection of a deep mutual respect was a far cry from the lack of regard for the observer of 1915 recalled by Robert Money (see pages 17-18). Perhaps this remarkable change in attitude in such a short time provides a clue which might help to explain the whole phenomenon.
Twentieth century warfare on an industrial scale effectively compressed time in that social and technological changes which might normally have occurred over a lifetime or more took place in just a few years. Among the more obvious examples of this process during the Great War are the meteoric careers of certain soldiers who were fortunate enough to have been in the right place at the right time. Their experience and seniority were such that they were ideally placed for rapid promotion within the hugely expanded wartime army, many of these men attaining ranks which they could hardly have even dreamt of reaching in peacetime.2 What implications might this have had within the microcosm of the RFC?
A volunteer observer, arriving on his first squadron directly from the trenches in 1915, was of very little immediate use. He had never been up in an aeroplane and, since he had had no training whatsoever, he had only the vaguest idea of what was expected of him. A newly certified contemporary pilot was only a marginally better prospect, of course, since he too needed to be ‘shown the ropes’ and he may well have tended to break aeroplanes at a rather distressing rate to begin with.
Once a new pilot had found his bearings and gained a little confidence, however, he became an increasingly capable and valued member of his squadron. New observers matured at a similar rate, of course, but as soon as they had acquired some ‘air sense’ and begun to make a positive contribution most of them disappeared to become pilots themselves. Their places were promptly taken by more bewildered tyros and the whole process had to be repeated. From the perspective of a hard-pressed CO, the early observers passing through his hands in an endless procession may often have appeared to have been rather more trouble than they were worth. By comparison, once the newly-trained pilot had found his feet, he began to accumulate wisdom and, eventually perhaps, sufficient gravitas to become a Flight Commander. In the meantime, he was obliged to fly with a series of green observers, the contrast between his own steadily expanding capabilities and those of his ‘passengers’ becoming more and more apparent as time went by.
Constant repetition of this cycle meant that within each squadron there would have been the permanent presence of a floating population of what amounted to dangerously inexperienced, semi- or unskilled comparative incompetents – the observers. Under the circumstances, while there would doubtless have been many exceptions to the rule, it would be quite understandable if the bulk of early observers had failed to inspire much confidence in some of the pilots who had to fly with them. In fact it would appear that they had also failed to inspire much confidence among some of their more experienced observer colleagues. For instance, when Lt A J Insall was considering applying to have (another) try at pilot training in May 1916, after ten months of active service as an observer with No 11 Sqn, his perception of his colleagues was a significant factor in his calculations. Insall was strongly inclined to go for single-seaters because ‘the idea of entrusting my skin to some of the observers I knew did not seem to appeal to me overmuch.’3
The Wing and Brigade Commanders of 1917-18 had been the Flight and Squadron Commanders of 1914-15. Could it be that their personal experience of observers during their active periods of relatively early combat flying had created an impression of inadequacy so marked that it stayed with them long after their rapid ascent through the ranks had taken them out of the cockpit? They must all have been aware of the progressive improvements that had been made to training and there were even isolated instances of senior officers, like Geoffrey Salmond, actually taking the observer’s part (see pages 58-59). It seems, however, that most of them may have developed, perhaps unconsciously, a permanently jaundiced view of observers.
While it is impossible to prove that this syndrome actually existed, it is not too difficult to identify individuals who fitted the pattern, perhaps the most prominent example being John Salmond. As a major, Salmond had commanded No 3 Sqn for the first eight months of the war, a period during which he would have been exposed to the apparent inadequacies of the first cohorts of untrained observers. Later, in 1917, as the brigadier responsible for RFC training, he had such confidence in the professional capabilities of the observers being produced by his organisation that he actively (if unsuccessfully) supported the case for the award of their badges on completion of their courses and the abolition of the mandatory period of probationary active service (see page 61). A year later, however, by then a major-general, back in France and commanding the RAF in the Field, he strongly opposed the suggestion that observers should be given the opportunity to exercise executive authority (see page 113).
While John Salmond, seen here as Air Marshal Sir John in the 1920s, had been keen to acknowledge the professional capabilities of the observers he was responsible for training in 1917, he was unable to support a case for them to be given any executive authority in 1918.
It would seem, therefore, that by 1918 many of the pilots at the bottom of the RFC’s hierarchy, that is those who were flying with them on operations, had come to accept observers as being more or less their equals. It is also clear, however, that those at the top were still quite unable (or unwilling) to acknowledge their potential. In fact, since they were drawn from substantially the same pool of manpower, observers and pilots would obviously have had much the same ability as individuals. It is easy to see, however, that the long-term and widespread practice of converting observers into pilots meant that few observers plied their trade for long enough to become truly expert in their field. This was bound to create a poor impression of the overall capabilities of observers and the system simply protected itself from them, the aim perhaps being not so much to preserve the paramountcy of pilots, as to prevent perceived incompetents from filling positions of authority.
The resultant regulations did serve to institutionalise an anti-observer bias within the RFC but they were not simply a manifestation of an illogical prejudice. The RFC’s discriminatory attitude towards its observers was based on a false impression which was actually created and sustained by the corps’ own practices and procedures.
Why did the peacetime RAF dispense with Observers in 1919?
There seems to be no specific record of the thinking behind the RAF’s decision to abandon observers, so one can only speculate on what it might have been.4 It is possible that the RAF was forced to dispense with non-pilot aircrew (along with most of its other commissioned specialists) by financial stringency. It could have been that, with only minimal funding available, the Service felt that the only way to make ends meet would be to employ, as officers, only people who were capable of flying an aeroplane and then making them double-up to act in other capacities. In army-terms this would equate to recruiting only artillery officers and then expecting them to spend some of their time building bridges, mending tanks or galloping about on horses. Needless to say, the Army, which was subject to much the same budgetary constraints as the RAF, did not elect to pursue such an unrealistic option. It would hardly have been a sensible response to a shortage of funds in any case, because it is very expensive to train people in two disciplines, especially when they can function effectively in only one speciality at a time.
Since the financial argument is unconvincing, there must have been some other reason for the RAF’s electing to do what it did. It is suggested that the most likely explanation for this decision lay in the previous experience of the man who made it. Hugh Trenchard, in common with practically all of the RAF’s first generation of generals, was a pre-war pilot who had turned to flying relatively late in life. While all of these men had been impressed by the military potential of the aeroplane and did their best to exploit it, they had actually been trained as soldiers (or sailors). Only later had they become airmen.5
Nevertheless, despite their evident enthusiasm, they can only really have been airmen by conviction. Circumstances had denied them the opportunity of spending the crucial formative years of their careers as aviators. Their personal experiences had conditioned them to have an instinctive ‘feel’ for what it was to be a soldier but most of their awareness of what was involved in being a flyer had to have been relatively superficial. This observation does nothing to belittle their subsequent achievements, quite the contrary, but it is difficult to see how a group of men who had spent their youth pig-sticking Pathans, bombarding the Boer or coaling-ship on the China Station could really have had an intimate appreciation of the day-to-day life, attitudes, outlook or opinions of an experienced professional flyer.
Trenchard’s post-war concept of an air force in which every officer would be able to fly an aeroplane plainly failed to take account of the fact that most pilots enjoy doing what they do so much that many of them tend not to want to do anything else. More often than not this ‘anything else’ includes flying in any capacity other than as a pilot. As a result, the Air Ministry’s declaration of January 1920, that ‘as no provision has been made for observers in the permanent Air Force, all officers (ie pilots) are to be considered available for the duties of observers’ (see page 132) proved to be little more than an exercise in wishful thinking. Despite the stated policy, the majority of pilots simply declined to occupy the back seat, the responsibilities of the non-existent observers soon being delegated almost universally to non-commissioned ground tradesmen who flew on a part-time basis.
Such a fundamental misjudgement can surely have been attributable only to an inability to understand what it really meant to be a committed practical aviator? Furthermore, Trenchard, in common with all of the RAF’s early air marshals, had been a pilot from the outset. None of these men had come up the ‘hard way’ via an apprenticeship as an observer. Since they had little, if any, first-hand experience of flying as a back-seater on operations, they simply could not have had a very firm grasp of their work, of the problems that it involved or of the very positive contribution that such men could make.
Indeed, many of the more senior and influential personalities in the RFC and the early RAF, Henderson, Trenchard, Sykes, Brancker, Ashmore, Game and Ellington for instance, had rarely (if ever) even flown in combat. Yet these men were the legislators and makers of policy. When arriving at their decisions they would have relied heavily upon the advice offered by the brigadier-generals commanding in the field; men with whom they were well acquainted from their time at the CFS, where many of them had attended pre-war courses, men like Pitcher, Longcroft, Charlton, Webb-Bowen and Newall. As suggested above, however, it would seem that this group of officers may well have had little regard for observers as a result of their having been exposed to their inadequacies in 1914-15, when these men had been flying operationally.
With only seven years’ experience of military aviation on which to draw, Trenchard could perhaps be forgiven for attempting to devise an ideal on which to base his peacetime air force. Perhaps it is only with hindsight that we are able to appreciate how unrealistic the concept of a pilots-only organisation would prove to be. On the other hand, it does seem to have been almost perverse to have virtually discounted in 1919 so much of what had been learned between 1914 and 1918.
Was the RAF justified in dispensing with its Observers and with officers of other key trades?
Did it really matter that the post-WW I RAF elected to do without commissioned back-seat aircrew, along with officers of most other specialisations? In the light of later developments, the answer to this question can only be – yes, it mattered. While this may be obvious today, however, it clearly cannot have been the case in 1919.
Trenchard freely acknowledged that ‘technical experts’ would be required for development work in the fields of ‘navigation, meteorology, photography and wireless’, all of which he recognised as being ‘primary necessities.’6 He envisaged, however, that all of these experts would be pilots holding permanent commissions, all of whom would be required to specialise in a technical discipline after five years of service. Unfortunately, this approach was bound to breed officers who would be pilots first and foremost. Since Trenchard evidently failed to understand this, he could not be expected to foresee that many of these men would find that their subsequent technical responsibilities were more irksome than stimulating.
Even if that were not the case, however, the experience of WW I had clearly demonstrated that pilots who were flying operationally were simply unable to do much else. In fact this was one of the first lessons that had been taught by the experience of airborne warfare and as early as November 1914 it had been found necessary to provide every squadron with a fourth Flight Commander to assist the CO with the handling of administrative and technical business on the ground.7 This proved to be a short-lived arrangement, however, because, as Sir David Henderson noted soon afterwards, ‘it has been found that there are various essential duties which can be performed by an officer who does not fly’,8 and, a fortnight later:
‘It is of vital importance to husband trained pilots and not to employ them on the ground, or as passengers in the air, on duties which can be performed in many cases by officers who, although not pilots, have expert technical knowledge, and in others by officers who may be qualified as pilots, but who, for various reasons, no longer wish to fly.’9
While strengthening the (already virtually accepted) case for professional observers, a direct consequence of Henderson’s observations was the early replacement of the fourth Flight Commander by the newly-created category of the Assistant Equipment Officer.10
In view of this, there must surely have been a considerable element of self-deception at work in 1919 to have enabled Trenchard to persuade himself that his future pilots would not need the same kind of professional assistance. How else could he have explained away the fact that during the recent war it had eventually been found necessary to employ thousands of technical and administrative officers – not to mention non-pilot aircrew?
Taking the December 1918 Air Force List as a reasonable reflection of the manning situation at the end of WW I, and leaving aside doctors, dentists and chaplains, we find that the officer corps numbered 21,018 graded personnel (of all kinds) who flew (or who were immediately involved in the direction and control of air operations), plus 9,198 who did not.11 In other words, for every 2·3 officers notionally available as aircrew, the wartime RAF had needed one on the ground. This aircrew:groundcrew relationship was no latewartime, new-fangled, ‘air force’ phenomenon incidentally, as the Air Force List for April 1918 reveals that the new Service had inherited a ratio of 2·4:1 from its forebears.
In the specific case of observers, there can be no doubt that by late 1918 the RAF had been fully aware of their value as navigators, especially within Trenchard’s own Independent Force. In September, for instance, his OC 83rd Wg, Lt-Col J H A Landon, had expressed the opinion that ‘the success of every raid probably depends upon the Observer as much as on the Pilot, and that the success of long raids depends rather more on the training of the Observer than on the training of the Pilot.’12 Even so, within a matter of months the Air Force had decided to do away with observers.
The same fate was to befall most of the officers who had been engaged on ground duties. By 1917 a squadron never had fewer than three officers established in support roles, a Recording Officer, a Stores Officer and an Armament Officer. As operations became more complex these numbers could be increased, depending on a squadron’s role. Thus, for instance, by the summer of 1918 a Handley Page squadron had four Technical Officers, rather than the usual two, while a corps reconnaissance squadron had two additional officers specialising in wireless equipment. If a wartime squadron had so recently required three, four, five and sometimes as many as six, ground-based officers dedicated to sustaining its operations it seems remarkably short-sighted to have assumed that this would not be the case in the future.
That said, operational efficiency was a very secondary consideration in the early post-war years. The problems which were far more likely to have focused the Air Council’s attention were financial and political. In its efforts to stimulate economic recovery the Government sought to restore Sterling to the Gold Standard which meant maintaining a balanced budget which, in turn, meant that the Treasury was obliged to impose extremely tight constraints on public expenditure. Paradoxically, this turned out to be a mixed blessing so far as the RAF was concerned. Tiny annual allocations of funds meant that research and development were under-resourced, which meant that there were few significant technical advances. Those developments that were introduced into service were hardly revolutionary and thus they did little to expose the myth of the pilot’s ability to cope unaided. On the other hand, it was only this same financial stringency that enabled the RAF to survive as an independent Service at all, air power proving to be a highly cost-effective means of maintaining imperial control, particularly over the vast tract of the Middle East which had become a British responsibility following the collapse of the Ottoman empire.
Lack of funds also served to inhibit the RAF’s expansion plans. Thus, despite parliamentary approval having been granted for a metropolitan air force of fifty-two squadrons as early as 1923, this aim had still not been achieved ten years later. Since the RAF was unable to buy all of the additional aeroplanes to which it was entitled, it followed that it would have been equally incapable of paying all of the men who would have been needed to fly and maintain them. It was obliged, therefore, to minimise its manpower requirements. This financial imperative provided further justification for a manning policy under which all officers would be pilots, some of whom would be required to do double duty in other fields. Furthermore, keeping the RAF small and lean, made it deceptively easy (for pilots) to organise and administer.
If economic conditions had served to promote reliance on pilots, what of political considerations? Was the international situation really so benign as to justify the RAF’s adopting such an unrealistic manning policy? In short – yes. In 1919 the government decided that its defence planning would be based on the assumption that there would be no major war for at least ten years.13 In 1928 this policy was made annually renewable14 and it was so renewed every year until 1933, hence the lack of urgency attached to the RAF’s authorised expansion during the 1920s.
This consideration aside, there was a considerable degree of popular support for international disarmament in the years following the Great War. Many governments, including those of the UK, subscribed to this ideal. While none was prepared to go so far as to disarm unilaterally, so long as there was some prospect, however faint, of an effective disarmament conference being held it would have been counterproductive to adopt anything resembling a warlike posture. So far as British politicians were concerned, therefore, there were no votes in rearmament until Hitler came to power, and not very many even then.
On balance, therefore, it could reasonably be argued that, in the prevailing economic and political climate, the RAF’s decision to concentrate its limited funds on pilots had made the best use of the available resources. Nevertheless, as discussed below, this policy would inflict damage which took many years to repair.
Did the lack of Observers have any effect on the development of air navigation?
Would it really have made any difference to the development of navigational techniques if the RAF had retained observers in peacetime? Almost certainly – yes. It will be recalled that the Bailhache Committee had made only one recommendation with respect to observers – in effect, that they should be recognised as a separate trade, equal in status to that of pilots, and that there should be no bar to their promotion (see page 32). Had this far-sighted measure been implemented promptly it would have provided both an effective counter to the prejudice that was becoming increasingly deep-rooted within the existing system and the catalyst that was needed to foster the creation of a professional class of specialist back-seaters.
Although Bailhache did not actually say so, it followed that his recommendation would, by permitting observers to attain ranks at which their voices could be heard, probably have ensured that some of them would have risen to become senior members of the ‘air establishment’ and this might well have had a significant influence on inter-war developments. In view of the financial constraints which prevailed during the 1920s, it may be stretching a point to suggest that the retention of observers would have prevented air navigation from stagnating to the extent that it did. On the other hand, it might have done – and the example set by the Fleet Air Arm certainly tends to support this contention.
This was certainly the view held by one senior naval aviator, Capt ‘Hank’ Rotherham, who wrote (in 1986) that, in his opinion the pre-war RAF::15
‘… had failed to realise how important it was to have officers man positions other than pilot in their aircraft. I think that the development of bomb-sights, navigation equipment, defensive guns, etc and the techniques for their use would have been much enhanced if it had been put in the hands of men who could understand them and, most importantly, have the authority to demand changes and improvements where necessary. I am convinced that had the Air Force had more ‘back seat’ men in its officers corps then that force, with its dedicated and brave and resourceful personnel would have been the war winner that it should have been.’
Responsibility for maintaining an awareness of air navigation within the RAF had clearly fallen to the graduates of Calshot’s Long Navigation Courses. In practice, however, throughout the 1920s, the majority of these officers tended to be employed merely as instructors, either at the Navigation School itself, where they kept the faith alive by preaching the gospel to the next course, or at an FTS, where they taught ab initio pilots a ten-hour syllabus of elementary air pilotage, involving nothing that they had learned at Calshot.16 Furthermore, it should not be assumed that all of these men were necessarily enthusiasts for their subject, simply because they had passed through Calshot. Some will have chosen to specialise in navigation only because they perceived it to be the least distasteful option when the time had eventually come for them to give up being full-time pilots and broaden their horizons by becoming an expert in some other field.
Nevertheless, while it was not possible to make a silk purse of a navigator (engineer, armament officer, etc) out of every sow’s ear of a pilot, there were some who did become deeply committed to their chosen specialisation. So far as air navigation was concerned, the RAF’s handful of experts would surely have known enough to have been able to specify some of the devices which were needed, and probably enough to have assisted in their practical development as well. Whether they really were capable of solving the problems of air navigation must remain a moot point, however, because, until the mid-1930s, no one ever asked them to – and that was the real problem.
It could be argued that contemporary technology would not have permitted much progress to have been made before this in any case. This is certainly true of some of the more sophisticated navigational aids introduced during WW II, which had to await the development of radar. On the other hand, astro could certainly have been introduced as a standard technique in the 1920s.17 Similarly, there is no reason why airborne radio direction finding should not have been in general use by the early 1930s. Furthermore, German exploitation of the directional properties of radio transmissions permitted the Luftwaffe to employ practical blind-bombing techniques long before the RAF did. Then again, an Air Position Indicator could probably have been in use ten years before such devices actually entered service. None of these examples required a technical breakthrough; all were based solely on the application of well-understood physics. The missing ingredient was a demand for such devices, because without it there could be no investment in their development.
The nearest thing to navigators in the inter-war RAF were the Calshot-trained pilots of flying boats, like this Southampton II of No 201 Sqn, S1233. But even these relatively longlegged machines rarely ventured out of sight of land and their crews made little use of astro – see Note 16.
The root of the problem lay in market forces and, within the RAF, there simply was no market. The experts could almost certainly have seen the problems that needed to be solved, but no one else was interested. Had there been a substantial number of observers in the Air Force, however, they would surely have been clamouring for more efficient navigational and bombing aids. But there were none, and the average pilot, having little interest in the more esoteric aspects of navigation, was quite content to find his way by following a railway line. Since most of the tiny handful of enthusiasts were mere flight lieutenants, they had virtually no influence in matters of policy and navigation marked time.
Writing fifty years before Rotherham, the consequences of the RAF’s policies were summed up in late 1936 by Gp Capt Arthur Harris when he wrote, in characteristically forthright style, that ‘the trouble with Service navigation in the past has been the lack of knowledge and of interest in the subject evinced by senior officers, down to and including the majority of Squadron Leaders’ and lamenting that ‘the junior officers that have been responsible […] for navigational equipment and methods […] have not carried sufficient guns to get these vital requirements properly co-ordinated and put across.’18
It is suggested that, if the RAF had, for the previous fifteen years, been employing observers having a status equal to that of pilots, Harris would not have had to write what he did. Even if he did have to write it, however, he would at least have had the satisfaction of having someone else to blame. As it was, any inadequacy revealed within the RAF of the 1930s could be attributable only to pilots.
Did the RAF’s ‘pilots only’ policy of the inter-war era distort its perceptions and limit its effectiveness?
Having no pretensions to being a sociologist or a psychologist, one hesitates to dabble in either of these black arts. Nevertheless, one does not need to be an expert to be able to appreciate that common personality traits and shared beliefs will tend to influence group behaviour while inducing a conformity of individual opinion. One would expect such trends to be particularly marked within a relatively closed society, especially one which selected its members very carefully and then spent two years conditioning them. The Cranwell-experience clearly tended to create a common mind-set among the junior career officers of the 1920s – that was, after all, one of the objects of the exercise. Since this will have influenced the attitudes of these officers in the 1930s, this mind-set is worth examining in a little more detail.
There can be little doubt that, quite understandably, many pilots (and, in the 1920s, all Cranwell graduates were pilots) feel a certain innate sense of superiority. After all, they, and they alone, control fast, powerful machines which can manoeuvre in three dimensions. The attractions of flying an aeroplane are obvious and those who are able to do so have always been much admired. This is still the case today, but it was even more so when pilots were as rare as they were in the 1920s. The RFC having done much to establish the image of the omnipotent pilot, the RAF subsequently did absolutely nothing to curb the growth of this myth. In fact, by dispensing with all other aircrew (and practically all other officers), it actively fostered the impression that pilots were able to do almost anything.
Since they routinely indulged in an extremely glamorous and exciting activity, not to mention one which had the undeniable frisson of a significant risk of injury or even death, it is hardly surprising that many of these young men came to believe in their own myth. If the nature of his occupation tended to encourage a military pilot to believe that he was a cut above the average, this tendency was reinforced by the status he was afforded within the Service. Apart from a handful of sergeants, all pilots were automatically commissioned. Oddly enough, however, only a few of them were subsequently called upon to exercise any powers of command. In the 1920s more than half of the RAF’s officer pilots were serving on five-year engagements during which they were required to do little more than fly their aeroplanes.
Beyond an obligation to try not to break their aeroplanes, even Cranwell-trained career officers did not begin to acquire any significant responsibilities for the first four or five years of their productive service.19 Yet practically all pilots were officers. Why? Because flying demanded the standards of education, intelligence, discipline and initiative traditionally associated with commissions in the other Services. If the RAF was to be successful in recruiting such men it would have to offer them similar terms to those which they could obtain from the RN or the Army. Furthermore, it would be necessary for a pilot to be an officer in order to be able to pay him a reasonable salary. It was never a lot, but a 25-year-old flying officer still earned more than twice as much as a 35-year-old sergeant in a skilled trade and, combined with the irresistible attractions of being able to fly, it was enough.
While the relationship between recruiting and pay clearly contributed to the close association between pilots and commissions, social class was another important factor. In 1920 a typical Cranwell cadet was required to contribute about £250 towards the cost of his two-year course.20 At 2012 prices this would equate to about £8,60021 and to have been be able to have afforded that sort of investment, a cadet’s parents would clearly have had to be reasonably well off. British society was still heavily influenced by ‘class’ during the inter-war years and, for the sort of outlay that they were being required to make, the heads of the comfortable middle-class households, from which the RAF drew many of its career officers, would have expected nothing less than a commission; after all, in effect, they were buying it.22
During the 1920s, therefore, the RAF established that, regardless of whether they actually commanded anything, most of its pilots would be officers. By obliging its career officers to specialise in some other trade after a few years of service, it helped to foster the image of the pilot, as ‘General Duties’ Officer, being able to turn his hand to anything and to excel at it. So far as pure flying was concerned, whether they actually spent their time droning across the deserts of Iraq in Vickers Vernons or trying to coax their war surplus DH 9As through the mountain passes of India’s North West Frontier Province, most young pilots considered themselves to be, indeed they were, of the same breed of men as those who thrilled the crowds at Hendon. To be an RAF officer in the 1920s, therefore, was to be a member of a very glamorous and exclusive club. Exclusive, that is, of anyone other than pilots.
Flight Captain Joan Hughes of the Air Transport Auxiliary with one of the 3,688 Stirlings delivered by that service, but it took more than just a pilot to make the aeroplane a weapon.
By the mid-1930s some of these men had matured, been promoted to middle management and were occupying some of the offices which opened onto the ‘corridors of power’. What was their outlook? Devoted to the Service which had nurtured them, their instinctive conservatism would have made them resistant to any suggestion that there might be something amiss with the officer corps. After all, their personal experience indicated that pilots were quite capable of dealing with practically anything.
What their experience did not reveal, however, was how well they had coped. Since all of the RAF’s officers were pilots, whenever a problem cropped up the only solutions offered were those that occurred to pilots. Perhaps there had been other ways to do things, perhaps even better ways. But even to admit to such a possibility would have represented a form of self-criticism – and an ego-involved opinion change is not one that is easy to embrace. If the state of air navigation in the early 1930s is anything to go by, however, it would appear that the all-knowing pilots were not even aware of some of the Air Force’s problems, or if they were, that they had chosen to ignore them.
Even worse, by having no professional aircrew other than pilots, the RAF had deluded itself into thinking that being able to fly an aeroplane was all that really mattered. In fact, being able to fly an aeroplane is merely a means to an end. As was to be repeatedly demonstrated during WW II, assisted only by a flight engineer, a Lancaster could be successfully flown by a single pilot – some of them ladies even. In later years, even a V-bomber could be safely flown by a pilot and an AEO. In neither case, however, could anything worthwhile be achieved, beyond moving the machine from A to B. The point of flying a Vulcan, a Lancaster – or a Virginia – was to be able to do something destructive with it and that required a competent crew of professional aviators, all of whom were just as important to the success of the enterprise as the pilot.
Refuelling a Siskin of No 32 Sqn under the direct supervision of a corporal. Overall responsibility for maintenance and engineering would have been vested in one of the squadron’s pilots but some will have approached these ‘secondary’ duties with less enthusiasm than others.
By late 1918 the RAF was, somewhat reluctantly, just beginning to come to terms with the implications of this. Unfortunately, however, the RFC had spent the previous four years belittling its back-seaters and it would probably have taken at least another four for the RAF to have fully accepted them as being of comparable status to pilots. The influence of the more enlightened RNAS had obliged the RAF to adopt a more even-handed approach, but the new Service had not really experienced a change of heart; there had been no ‘Road to Damascus’ transformation. Within a matter of months it had become quite clear that the RAF’s new attitude had been no more than a pose and that it was still firmly wedded to the idea of the inherent superiority of the pilot.
Nevertheless, when the peacetime RAF finally began to recognise that it was still faced with much the same problems that had had to be solved in 1914-18, it came up with much the same answers. From 1934 onwards specialist non-pilot aircrew began to be reintroduced, but with a significant difference. The RFC had understood instinctively that the majority of aircrew, including back-seaters, would need to be officers. Its pilots having (apparently) successfully managed, more or less, on their own for the previous fifteen years, the RAF of the early 1930s thought that it could get by with corporals – and part-timers at that.
One imagines that one or two of the more thoughtful Squadron Commanders of this period might have had some niggling doubts about this approach. How, for instance, was his unit supposed to cope with maintenance in wartime if a substantial proportion of its tradesmen were flying on operations? What if some of them failed to return? If their replacements were already qualified as aircrew (which was unlikely, as much of their training was to be carried out inhouse), this would do nothing to solve his servicing problem. On the other hand, if they were unqualified, he would have no one to fly with his replacement pilots. But there is little evidence to show that such considerations caused much concern.
The Zeitgeist of the 1920s had provided little incentive for officers to dwell on operational matters such as these. For example, one might have expected the majority of papers published in the RAF Quarterly to have explored alternative methods of persuading a bomb to hit a target or to have considered the best means of determining the number of bombs required to destroy it or to pondering the problem of how to find the objective in the dark. Articles dealing with such topics did appear, of course, but (as has been pointed out else-where23) a disproportionate amount of space was devoted to describing the delights of riding to hounds or the experience of travelling by camel train in some remote outpost of the empire.
While its junior- and middle-ranked officers may not have been devoting too much thought to solving intractable operational problems, what they did do well was to keep the RAF in the public eye through the medium of its annual Air Pageants at Hendon. These permitted its pilots to demonstrate what they were really good at – precision flying. A pilot’s ability to execute a spectacular display of aerobatics was impressive, of course, but it was not enough. Since career officer pilots were responsible for practically all air force activities, they needed to be equally as proficient in many other fields.
Unfortunately, some of these officers will inevitably have had limited aptitude for their ‘secondary’ specialisation and many more lacked much enthusiasm for it. On reflection, this was hardly surprising for young men who had, for the previous four or five years ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth/And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings’ on a more or less daily basis.24 This experience had turned many of them into committed professional flyers and, for them, the prospect of spending many months in the classroom, grappling with abstruse formulae, unscrambling wiring diagrams and poring over endless Air Publications – while simultaneously being expected to become familiar with both King’s Regulations and Air Council Instructions, and the Manual of Air Force Law – will have held few attractions.
This was especially true when the prize to be won was likely to be another three years during which the earthbound aviator would have to occupy himself with servicing schedules, exposure times and focal lengths, the storage of explosives or establishing the wavelength to use to maintain W/T contact with a remote detachment. These tasks were all undeniably important, even vital, but they can have had little appeal to a substantial proportion of pilots.25 Such matters would have been of absorbing interest to specialist officers, of course, but the RAF had long since dispensed with those.
Once the Service had elected to implement its pilots-only policy, it was committed to making it work. Since it did (or appeared to) work for some time, the officers involved came to have faith in the system and the all-embracing capabilities of the General Duties Officer on which it was based. Unfortunately, it was all an illusion. The system had only coped because it had not been subjected to stress. Once the RAF began to expand, it became increasingly apparent that it had actually been operating on what had amounted to an amateur basis for fifteen years.
For the Service to function efficiently it needed the same level of professional support that it had had in 1918 but for the career officers of 1935 to acknowledge this and introduce such a system would be to acknowledge that they had failed. As a result, only limited progress was made and it took several more years for the second generation of upstart, ‘second class’, non-pilot corporal aircrew to penetrate the pilots-only bastion of the Air Force’s commissioned establishment.26 Nevertheless, the reality of war would eventually force the hand of the conservatives and in 1940 the RAF finally reintroduced dedicated commissioned engineers, administrators – and non-pilot aircrew.
What were the long term effects of the RAF’s ‘pilots only’ philosophy on officers of other trades, and Navigators in particular?
Until the mid-1930s (apart from a handful of doctors, dentists, lawyers and chaplains) the only officers employed by the RAF as professional specialists were those of the Stores and Accounts Branches. All else was the business of the pilots of the so-called General Duties Branch. While this approach sufficed to sustain colonial police actions, conducted in daylight and in fair weather against technically unsophisticated and ill-equipped opponents, it was unable to cope with real warfare and in 1940 the RAF had been obliged to reinvent the wheel by reinstating the arrangements which had prevailed in 1918.
Apart from the time that it had wasted in having to rediscover how to keep itself operational, by adopting a pilots-only policy the RAF had also denied itself access to a great deal of human potential. Trenchard’s premise, that it was necessary for practically every RAF officer to be able to fly an aeroplane, had proved to be false. Not least because, as Geoffrey Salmond had tried to point out as early as 1917, it failed to take account of those individuals who, while they may have lacked a certain degree of hand and eye coordination, were in all other respects well motivated and highly competent (see page 58).
During the 1930s, the Trenchardian doctrine, that all officers must be able to fly, gradually began to give way to a more realistic concept, that all officers must be professional specialists, only some of whom needed to be pilots. This approach was initially introduced on a somewhat ad hoc basis but pragmatism had been largely transmuted into policy by mid-1940. From 1948 onwards the regulations were progressively refined until it would eventually become possible, at least in theory, for an officer of more or less any branch to achieve high rank.
That it took such a long time for this aim to be realised, was because history had first to be allowed to repeat itself. Despite the RNAS’ legacy of regulations which should have enabled back-seaters to rise within the newly formed RAF, no ex-RFC officer ever became a major whilst still graded as an observer. It is simply inconceivable that of more than 4,400 commissioned observers listed at the end of 1918 not one had shown the potential for promotion (see page 129), especially as several of them did achieve relatively high ranks after they had become pilots. All that the observers of 1918 had needed was a little patronage, but this had been universally withheld by the pilots who were then exclusively responsible for recommending candidates for promotion.
The circumstances of 1918 were to be very closely mirrored by those of 1945 when, with a very few exceptions, practically every officer holding the rank of squadron leader or above was a pilot.27 Many of these officers, belonging, as they did, to the ‘old school’, passed on their pre-war attitudes to their successors. Take for instance, Gp Capt (later Air Mshl Sir Patrick) Dunn who, in 1948, wrote:28
‘No young man contemplating a regular career in the General Duties branch of the Service can hope for advancement if he does not realise that flying (it is quite clear from the context that he means, as a pilot) is a sine qua non – if he cannot master it he is useless to the Service. But it is only that. If he can and does master aircraft he is then able to develop, as an officer, in the purpose for which his commission was granted.’
Plainly, the pre-war Trenchardian presumption that all officers should be pilots, and its inescapable corollary, that pilots were in some way superior to all other beings, was still warping the perceptions of, at least some, of the Air Force’s more senior, and thus more influential, officers. As a result, although it did slowly fade away, there continued to be a degree of prejudice ingrained within the system.
Prejudice aside, when navigators were finally granted access to the career ladder in 1948 they found that all thirty years’ worth of the rungs above them were already occupied by pilots. As a result, navigators could not be expected to get anywhere near the top until the 1970s. Furthermore, the term ‘comparable career’ had a real meaning only for those officers fortunate enough to have been offered permanent commissions, like Cranwell cadets. So far as navigators were concerned, it would be 1959 before any of them were able to take advantage of the preferential treatment reserved for graduates of the RAF College and even then only in disproportionately small numbers.29
Despite this slow start, it had been accepted, at least in principle, as early as 1943 that non-pilots were capable of discharging executive functions, and before the war ended a few of them had been appointed as Flight and Squadron Commanders. This was never a common practice, however, and non-pilot executives continued to be a rarity during the early post-war years. They eventually began to come into their own during the 1960s when statistically significant numbers of navigators began to command units.
In 1980 the General Precisions Trophy was presented to the best individual crew in navigation in that year’s Strike Command Bombing and Navigation Competition. Under the circumstances, for the purposes of this commemorative photograph, it might have been more appropriate for the trophy to have been held by the Nav (Plotter) but it is interesting to see that it is actually in the hands of the captain. It would, of course, have been quite possible for the navigator to have claimed this privilege on the basis of his trade or even, in this case, by pulling rank, but this would simply have been alien to the prevailing culture within the V-Force.
Curiously enough, although it had become perfectly feasible by the 1970s for a navigator to command a squadron of V-bombers, even an entire station, as a number of them did, as AVM S R Ubee had pointed out as early as 1954, it was ‘quite clear that the Navigator in these aircraft will never become a Captain,’ adding, ‘and thus we lose the first step in the “comparable career” concept.’30 So while pilots had, in the name of equal opportunities, been obliged to relinquish their exclusive grip on executive appointments, they had covered their embarrassment at this loss of prestige by clinging steadfastly to the fig leaf of captaincy. The sole exception to this pattern occurred in the world of maritime operations where the appointment of a navigator or an AEO to command the crew of a Shackleton or Nimrod was to become a relatively unremarkable event.
Within the V-Force, the combination of constituted crews and captaincy being the prerogative of the first pilot meant that an entire crew could be identified solely by reference to him. This commonplace custom inspired riddles along the lines of, ‘What has five heads, ten legs but only one name?’, the answer, of course, being a V-bomber crew. An unfortunate consequence of this practice was that, regardless of where the real strength lay within a crew, its achievements tended to be associated with its captain, invoking echoes of 1917 when pilots were credited with all victories over enemy aircraft, including those shot down by their observers.
While, in the interests of brevity, it obviously made sense to use the captain’s name as a convenient label with which to identify a permanently constituted five-man team, it also represented a very subtle form of discrimination. This may well have been unintentional but the fact remains that, simply because their names appeared on tote boards, flying programmes, statistical returns, notes of significant events recorded in ORBs and so on, pilots inevitably had a higher profile than the relatively anonymous back-seaters. In an ideal world, this should have made no difference, but, in reality, because pilots’ names made a far greater impression on the corporate (un)consciousness, their careers were far more likely to flourish than those of their colleagues, sitting behind them facing backwards in the dark.
From the 1970s onwards the ‘sharp end’ of the RAF began to replace its three-man Canberras and five-man V-bombers with two-seat Phantoms, Buccaneers and, eventually, Tornados. Here too, the pilot retained the exclusive right to captaincy. Even so, a wing commander navigator, sitting behind a flight lieutenant pilot, would have been unwise to assume that he would emerge unscathed from a Board of Inquiry convened to investigate his captain’s indulgence in a little unauthorised low-flying – a classic case of implied responsibility without conferred authority.
Nevertheless, the increasing number of two-seat attack aeroplanes constituting the RAF’s front line had finally begun to raise the profile of the navigator. Probably led by the Buccaneer community, with its strong naval influence, there was a growing acknowledgement of the fact that the GIB (guy in the back) was actually carrying, at least, half the load.31 He looked after navigation, managed the weapon system, handled threat detection, analysis and countermeasures, and maintained a look out, leaving the pilot to concentrate on not hitting the ground and weapon aiming – although, when precision-guided munitions (eg laser- or TV-guided bombs or missiles) were involved, the navigator did that too. Whether at medium altitudes or at better than 550kts and (sometimes) less than 100 feet this called for mutual understanding and the closest of close co-operation. The demonstrable ability of navigators to be able to make a very positive contribution to the success of, even to control, a mission, in this increasingly complex and very demanding operational environment meant that it eventually became commonplace for navigators to become Qualified Weapons Instructors (QWI) and to fill supervisory and executive posts at squadron and station level.
By the 1980s a few navigators (and officers from nonaircrew branches) were beginning to attain relatively high ranks but pilots continued to fill the majority of very senior appointments – as they still do. In 2000 no fewer than twenty-seven of the RAF’s most senior thirty-six officers (75%) were pilots. This suggests that something like three out every four officers must have been pilots. This was far from being the case; the actual proportion was only one in four.32
That the RAF’s instinctive preference for pilots had meant that it had taken navigators (and others) such a long time to achieve high rank may have been a disappointment to the individuals concerned, but it could be said that that was of secondary importance. What really mattered was that, for (at least) the first half-century of its existence, the RAF had failed to exploit the potential of many very capable people, simply because they were not pilots. In 1999 the Service announced that it had finally adopted a policy of appointing ‘the best man for the job’ (see page 338) but it is bound to take several years for the outcome of this initiative to become apparent.
It is sobering to reflect that if Charles Portal had not elected to trade-in his flying ‘O’ for a pilots badge during WW I the RAF would soon have dispensed with his services. Had he remained an observer, he would have been demobilised, still a mere lieutenant, in 1919 and the RAF would have had to look elsewhere for its CAS in WW II. One wonders how many potentially great men the RAF has overlooked because they were wearing the wrong flying badge – or no badge at all?
Conclusion
Historians are often accused of judging past events in the light of later knowledge, rather than by that which was known at the time. While this writer cheerfully admits to having a somewhat partisan point of view where non-pilot aircrew are concerned, it is contended that his opinions were not formed by taking undue advantage of hindsight. The basic facts are these. The RFC of 1913 had suspected that it might well need aircrew other than pilots. The RAF of 1919 knew that it did – and it knew a good deal about them. It then either misunderstood, chose deliberately to misinterpret or simply ignored these facts. The facts were still there, however, and the RAF of the inter-war years had ample opportunity to study the Great War and to learn the lessons that it had taught.
Among the more obvious of these lessons were: that professional non-pilot aircrew were essential; that, in order to recruit observers of a suitable calibre, they would need to be paid the rate for the job, which meant that they would probably have to be commissioned and that they should have career prospects similar to those offered to pilots. If the gift of hindsight was required to be able to perceive what was necessary then the admirals of the inter-war years were plainly blessed with it, whereas contemporary air marshals were not. But it is suggested that the RAF’s persevering with its unfortunate pilots-only approach had less to do with a lack of hindsight than it had with a fundamentally flawed policy which led to an increasingly blinkered attitude.
If Sir Charles Portal had remained the observer that he originally had been, he would have been demobilised, still a mere lieutenant, in 1919. The same was true of many other officers who were able to achieve prominence only after changing their badges, eg MRAF Sir Sholto Douglas, Air Chf Mshl Sir Guy Garrod and Air Mshl Sir Bertine Sutton; they were not alone.
The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Hegel (1770-1831) once wrote, ‘What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.’ He was not alone in reaching this conclusion, the Spanish writer George Santayana (1863-1952) observing that, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ While the RAF may not have conformed to these patterns entirely, it has certainly tended to do so where its non-pilot aircrew have been concerned. Exactly as Hegel would have predicted, it is quite astonishing to observe that the RAF largely ignored the lessons of 1939-45, which, so far as non-pilots were concerned, had been exactly the same as those taught by 1914-18. While the RAF of 1946 did not go quite so far as to dispense with all non-pilot aviators, as it had done in 1919, the ill-conceived ‘aircrew’ scheme of 1946 was clearly an attempt to downgrade the status of those who remained and to foreclose on their having any realistic prospect of a worthwhile career.
Whether the arguments presented here have been accepted or not, there can be little dispute that the following statement is true. Having, in 1919, rapidly reinstated the practices of 1913, the RAF had permitted its pilots to reestablish their original and undisputed hegemony. This fostered the fiction that pilots could do almost everything associated with the operation of aeroplanes and that what they could not do themselves in the air could be safely delegated to a misemployed volunteer ground tradesman. Unfortunately, this philosophy was based on a false premise. As a result, the lessons of 1915 had to be learned all over again in the 1930s and again in the late 1940s.
The sad part is that all of this wasted time could probably have been saved if the War Office had only heeded the advice of Sir Clement Bailhache’s Committee in 1916.
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1 From a passage from Hubert Griffiths, RAF Occasions (1941), quoted in Wings of War (Ed F Alan Walbank, 1942), p21.
2 Examples of accelerated promotion within the RFC are legion. For instance Majs J F A Higgins, C A H Longcroft, W S Brancker and J M Salmond had all become major-generals within four years, some of them in three. Similarly, captains in 1914, T I Webb-Bowen, L E O Charlton, G S Shephard, H C T Dowding and C L N Newall were all brigadiers in 1918. Even more remarkable were the cases of Maj-Gens E L Ellington and W G H Salmond, both of whom had begun the war as captains, and Brig-Gen P H L Playfair who had gone to France in August 1914 as a mere lieutenant. Most of these officers (and this list is far from exhaustive) were holding their senior ranks on a temporary basis, of course, but this did nothing to diminish either their authority or their influence.
3 A J Insall, Observer (1970), p122.
4 AIR8/19 might appear to be the most promising source of clues, as it contains a substantial quantity of papers and correspondence raised between 1919 and 1923 dealing with the provision of personnel for the post bellum air force. Unfortunately, it sheds no light on the reasons behind the decision to dispense with observers.
5 The most extreme example of a late conversion to the faith is probably represented by Trenchard’s first DCAS, RAdm Mark Kerr, who had acquired his seaplane pilot’s ‘ticket’ in Greece less than a month before the war at the age of fifty.
6 AIR1/17/15/1/84. These quotations are taken from the famous ‘Trenchard Memorandum’ of 25 November 1919 which was subsequently endorsed by Parliament to become the blueprint for the peacetime RAF.
7 AIR1/366/15/231/6. The addition of a fourth Flight Commander to act as assistant to the Squadron Commander was sanctioned by War Office letter 20/Royal Flying Corps/56(MA1) of 6 November 1914.
8 AIR1/502/16/3/11. Unreferenced note, dated 5 January 1915, from Maj-Gen Henderson to the Adjutant General.
9 Ibid. Minute, dated 19 January 1915, from Maj-Gen Henderson to CIGS on File 100/Flying Corps/43.
10 AIR1/1291/204/11/83. The existence of the new category having been formally recognised by a Royal Warrant of 26 March, the provision of an assistant equipment officer for each squadron, in lieu of the fourth Flight Commander, was reflected in a revised establishment published on 27 April 1915 (see also Note 31 to Chapter 5).
11 The 21,018 ‘aircrew’, which excludes officers above the rank of lieutenant-colonel, broke down as: 14,111 aeroplane officers; 689 seaplane officers; 412 dual-rated aeroplane and seaplane officers; 339 airship officers; 1,033 kite balloon officers; and 4,434 observer officers. the corresponding division of the 9,198 officers of ground branches (three of whom were full colonels) was: 783 staff officers; 5,276 technical officers; 3,109 administrative officers; 25 motor boat officers and 5 gymnastic officers.
12 AIR1/1982/204/273/88. Letter 83W/A12/6 dated 5 September 1918 from Lt-Col Landon to HQ VIII Bde.
13 CAB/23/15. Conclusions of War Cabinet Meeting 616A held on 15 August 1919.
14 CAB/23/58. Conclusions of Cabinet Meeting 39(28) held on 18 July 1928.
15 G A Rotherham, op cit, p207.
16 Between 1924 and 1933 twenty-one officers graduated from Nos 4-13 Long/Specialist Navigation Courses. Fourteen of them were subsequently employed on routine instructional duties; four were posted to squadrons or stations. Only three were assigned to posts having anything to do with policy or development work (one went to the Air Ministry, one to the Admiralty Compass Observatory and one was assigned to work with the British Arctic Air Route Expedition of 1930).
17 AIR27/1217. Appendix F (the one dedicated to navigational aspects) to the Report on the 10,500-mile deployment of the Southamptons of the Far East Flight from the UK to Singapore in 1927-28 notes that although sextants were available they were never used. The reports on the subsequent 1928 cruises to and around Australia (12,000 miles) and around the South China Sea (4,500 miles) do not even mention astro.
18 AIR2/2860. Memorandum, concerning the state of navigation within the RAF, dated 3 November 1936 on Air Ministry file S.47629, from Harris, as Deputy Director of Plans, to the Director of Staff Duties (Air Cdre W S Douglas) and the Director of Training (Gp Capt R Leckie).
19 The Trenchard Memorandum of 1919 had anticipated that career officers would fly for five years before having to select a technical specialisation; AMWO 426 of 21 June 1928 reduced this honeymoon to four years.
20 AIR10/160. AP 121, published in September 1920, contained the provisional regulations governing the RAF (Cadet) College at Cranwell. A gentleman cadet was expected to contribute £100 towards the cost of uniform and books plus, for each year of his two-year course, £75 to cover tuition fees. While the majority of cadets were obliged to pay their way, provided certain conditions could be met, some relief could be obtained, particularly for the sons of Service families, through a variety of concessionary schemes and bursaries. In addition, cadetships were awarded to a handful of the most deserving airmen graduating from each apprentice entry.
21 See Chapter 7, Note 2. A brief period of early post-war inflation meant that by 1925 the same £250 would have been worth more than £12,000 of 2012 money.
22 The payment of fees was abolished when the Cranwell cadetship scheme was reinstated after WW II.
23 By, for instance, Dr Robin Higham on page 46 of the 19th Journal of the RAF Historical Society.
24 From the opening lines of the poem High Flight written by Plt Off James Gillespie Magee of No 412 Sqn in 1941.
25 Needless to say, there were some notable exceptions to this general rule, the most prominent example probably being Sir Frank Whittle, whose work on gas turbines was to be of such fundamental importance. As an ex-apprentice, however, it could be argued that Sir Frank was such an exception because he was essentially an engineer and only incidentally a pilot, albeit a very competent one.
26 There are striking similarities between the situation of the underprivileged observer/navigator of the 1930s and 1940s and his need to overcome the prejudice of pilots, and the struggle of women to break down similar barriers throughout the 20th Century and, during its last twenty years, within the RAF itself.
27 See Chapter 29, Note 8.
28 From an article entitled ‘Leadership in the RAF – Thoughts on Qualifications, Discipline and Promotion’ by Gp Capt P H Dunn in Flight for 8 July 1948.
29 E B Haslam, op cit, p 177, notes that in November 1966 there were only 38 navigators at Cranwell, compared to 265 pilots – a ratio of 7:1, compared to the 2:1 in general service.
30 AIR20/7385. Memo, dated 11 May 1954, dealing with the constitution of crews for the forthcoming Medium Bomber Force, from AVM S R Ubee, Director General of Personnel II, to AMP.
31 Graham Pitchfork’s Buccaneer Boys (2013) conveys a good impression of the way in which the crew of a strike/attack two-seater operated in the late 20th Century, and indeed today.
32 Leaving aside doctors, dentists, lawyers and the like, the 2000 Air Force List contained the names of 10,056 officers ranked as group captains or below – I know because I counted them! Of these, 4,289 (42·6%) were members of the GD Branch. For the record, the Ops Support Branch numbered 1,636 (16·3%) and there were 1,880 (18·7%) engineers, 710 (7·1%) suppliers and 1,541 (15·3%) administrators. Of the aircrew, however, only 2,618 were pilots; that is just 26% of the overall officer corps, or one in four.
Another interesting statistic revealed by this exercise is that, despite their impending extinction, in 1999 (the year actually reflected by the 2000 List) back-seaters actually represented a higher proportion of the total than ever, the long term pilot:nav ratio of 2:1 having fallen as low as 18:1.
It might have been informative to have repeated this exercise for the second edition of this book but this has not been possible since 2007, because the Ministry of Defence concluded that it was no longer necessary to publish the Air Force List. As a result, the public, and more specifically students of air force history, are now denied access to a document of record that had run in an unbroken sequence, albeit at progressively greater intervals (but never less than annual), since 1918. This was a most regrettable, and egregiously short-sighted, decision.