The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice

Volunteers for flying duties in both the First and Second World Wars found that there was an expectation that aircrew candidates, especially pilots, would be ‘gentlemen’. It was typical for recruiting offices to ask a candidate which sports he played, and ‘rugger and cricket’ were considered mandatory for pilot trainees. For First World War recruits, evidence of horsemanship was also demanded.

Equestrian sports were not only the preserve of gentlemen, but were also supposed to quicken reaction times and make men better judges of distances. Many who applied for aircrew training failed to meet the gentleman’s criteria, and were either turned away or told to consider enlisting in a ground trade. One of those who found a ‘class ceiling’ was Leading Aircraftsman Harry Jones, son of a Birmingham brewery worker. When he visited the recruiting office in 1935, aged 18, he was told, ‘You’ve got to be a gentleman to fly,’ and he subsequently became a rigger attached to 37 Squadron, Bomber Command.

However, in both wars the demands for aircrew meant that the class criterion was relaxed, although even by the end of the Second World War it was still more common to find working-class men in non-pilot aircrew trades, especially as gunners.

As both wars wore on, educational criteria were also relaxed for aircrew. In the early part of the First World War it was considered desirable for aircrew candidates to have had a ‘public school education,… good all round engineering training’, as well as ‘outdoor sporting tendencies’.

Initially, those recruited into the ground support trades were also expected to be highly skilled (as carpenters, mechanics, riggers, etc), and had to pass a trade test to get in.

By the mid-war point, possession of an aviator’s certificate and medical fitness were generally considered sufficient criteria to join either the RFC or the RNAS.

Similarly, prior to the Second World War pilot and observer candidates were expected to have at least four years’ secondary education, and ideally a University Entrance qualification. By 1942 ‘some secondary education’ and a demonstrated ‘aptitude for flying’ were increasingly being seen as sufficient, as long as candidates could pass flying training examinations. Certainly by 1944 aircrew selection and classification had moved away from educational qualifications to measurements of natural aptitude, as it was felt that the RAF could no longer rely on a sufficient supply of privately educated candidates coming forward.

The relaxation of educational standards was ironic, as, in both wars, the development of aircraft and related technologies demanded greater knowledge and skills from aircrews.

During both wars, the respective training organisations had difficulty producing the quality of aircrew demanded by bombing operations. This was especially true of the first years of war, but also in both cases, as demands for aircrew increased and training courses were generally shortened, the quality of aircrew joining operational squadrons was often inferior. However, during the First World War there was a sharp contrast between the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service product. The RNAS aircrew training was far more rigorous in comparison with that of the RFC, and this was in spite of the fact that the Flying Corps engaged in an increasing number of bombing operations as the war progressed. This difference in aircrew training standards was to have a major impact not only on operational efficiency during the First World War, but also in the first years of the next war. When the RFC and RNAS were amalgamated in April 1918 to form the RAF, the new service was closer in character and outlook to the RFC simply because it had provided the bulk of its personnel. Whereas the RNAS contributed 55,000 officers and men, the RFC’s input was over 200,000. But, perhaps most seriously, the number of senior naval personnel being retained in the RAF was very small, and the Admiralty’s long tradition of heavy investment in training (and research and development) was lost.

In the RNAS, officer aircrew training required the entrant to undertake first a six-week course of theoretical training in navigation, engine construction, wireless telegraphy, theory of flight, and meteorology. After passing these subjects, a pilot trainee was then sent to one of five Preliminary Flying Schools, where he learned to fly two types of aircraft to ‘a reasonable level of proficiency’, completing at least 20 hours solo flying, some of which was cross-country. At this stage pupils were selected for specialised training in seaplanes, scouts or bombers, and after a number of weeks training on one of these types, additional instruction lasting one month was devoted to subjects such as signals, photography, and navigation. This advanced training lasted for three months. In 1917, when the RNAS’s bombing and anti-submarine effort reached a peak, the length of navigation training for pilots was, in fact, increased, from two to three weeks. Meanwhile, observers, who fulfilled the role of navigator in two-seater aircraft, were given their own separate course lasting four months beyond their preliminary training. Most of these four months were devoted to instruction in navigation (including dead-reckoning and astro-navigation), but bomb-dropping and wireless telegraphy were also taught in detail. A pass mark of at least 85 per cent was required for a First Class Observer’s Certificate, and at least 60 per cent had to be obtained to graduate. Then, in January 1918, the Admiralty inaugurated a combined course of navigation and bomb-aiming.

Training in the RFC, meanwhile, was sketchy, even allowing for the fact that there was insufficient time to produce fully qualified aircrew because of the manpower demands of the Western Front. The trainee pilot undertook, on average, only six hours’ preliminary flying before being sent to advanced training. During a month’s advanced training, the emphasis was on artillery observation, photography, and air-to-air combat. Some instruction was given in bomb-dropping, but very little practical experience was obtained. A Pilot’s Certificate was granted if the candidate could carry out a cross-country flight of 60 miles, but this was the extent of long-distance flying, and only if a pilot wished to graduate as a Flying Officer was navigational training undertaken. While the operations conducted by the RFC for most of the war (artillery spotting, reconnaissance and air-to-air combat) did not require pilots to be trained in long-range navigation, it had commenced long-range bombing operations in October 1917. The so-called 41 Wing was brought into existence when the War Cabinet called for a ‘continuous offensive’ against objectives inside Germany. From a base near Nancy, the Wing operated against industrial targets around Cologne, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, involving return flights of at least 280 miles. Even at the start of 1918, when the expansion of this role seemed likely, the RFC was still placing emphasis on artillery spotting and aerial combat in its aircrew training programme.

The relative inexperience of RFC bombing crews manifested itself in a variety of ways, but the first most obvious manifestation was a high accident rate. Brooke-Popham, when an Air Commodore in 1919, reflected:

‘During the last eighteen months of the war, the average wastage was 51 per cent per month, ie all the machines with squadrons in France had to be replaced once every two months or six times a year. In other words, each machine lasted an average of sixty days, which would mean a little over sixty hours’ flying time per machine. As regards causes of wastage, that known to be due directly to enemy action never reached 25 per cent… Whenever we had heavy casualties in pilots it meant that a large batch of new pilots came out from England, who were unused to the country and lacking in experience; consequently, a heavy casualty list was generally followed by a large increase in the number of aeroplane casualties due to errors of pilots.’

Operational performance was degraded by the lack, first, of navigational training among 41 Wing aircrews. For example, 55 Squadron had difficulty not only locating their German objectives during bombing operations in December 1917 as aircraft were compelled to navigate ‘above the clouds’, but the squadron’s members were also recorded as having had difficulty finding their home base.

Crews complained that there were never enough maps to aid navigation, and Bradshaw’s Railway Guide was used in order to navigate along railway lines. One of the best accounts of this practice comes from the memoirs of Air Commodore P. Huskinson, who held a post in the Directorate of Training in the late 1920s. Relating his experience of a cross-country flight in 1916, he wrote:

‘I was solely dependent, as was the established practice, on the map contained in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide. However, a close study of this, known throughout the Flying Corps as the Pilot’s Friend, and by repeated low dives on stations along the line, I was able, in spite of the maddening fact that most of the stations appeared to bear no name but OXO, to grope my way home in reasonably good time.’

Deficiencies in bombing training in the RFC had to be rectified by training on the squadron. Typically, one flight (six aircraft) on each squadron was set aside to carry out bombing training for new arrivals. However, as the RFC thought it unnecessary to offer written guidance in the matter, each squadron tended to develop bombing tactics through its own experimentation and experience.

After the war, Brooke-Popham made the comment that the RFC never achieved an extensive bombing capability in large part because there had been insufficient time to train pilots and observers in the art of bomb-dropping.

He also commented that there was a tendency among RFC bombing crews to select their own targets, rather than the objectives specified in their briefings, simply because targets of opportunity demanded less skill in navigation, and tended to present larger profiles.

In contrast, by the end of 1916 the naval aircrews were confident of their ability to find their targets and to bomb them successfully. Throughout the war, in addition to a superior training programme, the Admiralty had also devoted a great deal of time and thought to the design of instruments that would assist the pilot and observer in their work, and the area to receive the greatest attention was aids to navigation. By 1917 the RNAS had in its possession a number of valuable instruments, among them the Course and Distance Indicator, the Douglas Protractor, and the Drift Indicator. Such was the accuracy of these pieces of equipment that RNAS crews were able to fly confidently above the clouds over long distances, whereas the RFC crews had none of these supporting aids. By the beginning of 1917 navigation by Direction Finding wireless telegraphy had also been introduced to most naval squadrons. However, the War Office dismissed the system for navigational purposes, and, after the amalgamation of the RFC and the RNAS, no more work was done in the area of radio navigation until just prior to the Second World War.

Also high on the list of the RNAS’s technical problems to be solved was that of bomb-aiming. The difficulty was not so much in the design of a bombsight, but in the fitting of a sight to an aircraft. A number of RNAS personnel set about developing an effective sight, and the best product was known as a ‘Course Setting Bombsight’. This allowed an aircraft to attack from any angle, irrespective of the direction of the wind, and it remained in use until the Second World War, little research and development having been undertaken in the interim.

Evidence of the RNAS’s efficacy is suggested by the fact that the Germans developed their air defences in those areas being targeted by the naval squadrons. When naval bombing operations began in earnest in October 1916, the Germans created an air defence command, and when a naval wing began operations from a base at Luxeuil, 80 miles south of Nancy, the Germans established what were described as ‘very large aerial forces’, and four new enemy aerodromes were constructed.

The official historian also records that extra barrage detachments were allocated to the Saar, Lorraine, and Rhineland industrial areas, and the morale effect of the naval bombing operations was said to be great, disproportionate to the number of raids and the material effects.

With the amalgamation of the RFC and the RNAS in April, the naval bombing operations came to an end. The RAF continued bombing operations with its Independent Bombing Force (IBF), but reflecting the preponderance of RFC personnel in the new service, the targets tended to favour army bombing policy (enemy Lines of Communication and airfields), rather than the true strategic objectives targeted by the RNAS (ammunition factories and steel plants).

Former RFC pilots in the IBF soon found that their navigation skills were not sufficient for the job, as most operations were being conducted at night. It was recommended that aircraft be flown above white roads, or, if this was not possible, for distinctive landmarks to be noted and memorised before the flight. There was a heavy reliance upon old RNAS stocks of navigation literature or aids to navigation. For instance, just prior to the IBF’s creation a Major wrote to RAF HQ requesting 12 RNAS Course and Distance Indicators and six copies of the RNAS book Aerial Work. These, it was said, would assist squadrons in cloud flying training and operations.

Similarly, virtually all the bombsights and bombing manuals were drawn from Admiralty sources.

The legacy of the RFC’s lack of interest and investment in research and development was apparent, not only in the last months of the First World War, but also during the inter-war years. During the 1920s budgetary constraint, and associated inter-service rivalry, compelled Trenchard, as Chief of Air Staff, to make increasingly grandiose claims for air power. By the end of that decade British strategic bombing doctrine claimed that not only would the bomber always get through, but that finding and destroying a target was a straightforward business. With this doctrine underpinning the inter-war RAF, there was little incentive to pursue research and development into aids to navigation and bomb-aiming, but nor was there a sufficiently strong research and development tradition remaining within the new service to act as any sort of counter-balance to the effects of air power dogma. As the 1930s unfolded, the race to achieve numerical parity with German air power meant that the focus was on expanding the RAF’s aircraft establishment, rather than developing supporting technologies or increasing the number of personnel who would have to fly these aircraft.

The RAF’s expansion between 1934 and 1939 aimed at increasing the frontline aircraft establishment at home from 547 to at least 1,780.

Eight different expansion schemes were proposed during this time, each with slightly different emphases, but all with a main focus on bomber production. Far less attention was paid to the question of how to man this force. On the eve of expansion, in November 1933, the RAF employed just over 33,000 officers and men. It was not a size of force that would be able to service or operate the anticipated increase in aircraft numbers. Numerous measures were introduced to meet this challenge, but the development of the training organisation lagged far behind the material expansion of the RAF, and this was to have serious consequences in the first half of the war.

To begin with, recruits were attracted to the RAF by short service commissions, lasting four or five years on the active list, with renewable periods of service. These recruits were trained at civilian flying schools, which received a fee from the Air Ministry. Then, in 1936, a Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve was formed with the object of providing ab initio training for pilots. Finally, University Air Squadrons were established, and these persuaded many undergraduates to take up flying and to acquire the technical knowledge that would be so much in demand once war started.

These various measures succeeded in producing a seven-fold increase in the number of pilots trained each year. However, not until the late 1930s was it appreciated that other aircrew trades would also require expansion. As late as 1936 it was felt that one observers’ school would be sufficient to train all the observers required by the new size of force, but, more seriously, it was also believed that other aircrew trades could be trained on the squadrons.

This was in spite of the fact that the expansion programme envisaged the introduction of aircraft capable of much longer ranges and of greater technical complexity, demanding much higher standards of piloting and navigation. Specialised navigation courses were not introduced until 1937, but even then civilian flying schools were to provide most of the navigational training. The product coming out of these civilian schools proved inferior to the service-trained individual, and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that the RAF engaged in no long-range navigation exercises before the war broke out.

Further, there was no separate navigator function until 1941, as it was considered sufficient to have two pilots in the longer-range aircraft.

Until 1938, almost all of the other aircrew trades (wireless operators, air gunners, etc) were on part-time flying duties only and were trained on a part-time basis. The system was economical during peacetime, but once war broke out the RAF found that it could not provide full crews. Direct entry into these trades was disappointing, as no one wanted to be anything other than a pilot. Again, specialised training was slow in inception. A Central Gunnery School was not created until October 1939, and not until 1942 were the gunnery and wireless operator functions separated out.

One of the greatest obstacles to aircrew training during the late 1930s was a reluctance to divert not only qualified personnel into instructor roles but also potential front-line aircraft into training units. The emphasis on the RAF’s quantitative strength in the front line meant that the it had little in the way of reserves, either to sustain losses during wartime or to provide a sufficient training foundation. So, for example, although the number of initial flying training schools had been increased from five to nine in 1936, these schools failed to meet their targeted output to the extent of 1,200 pilots by 1939, and this shortfall was not made up until the latter part of 1941.

In the short term, the output from the various training schools was increased by the expedient of shortening course lengths, but it soon became apparent that aircrews were substantially below standard. Like the Royal Flying Corps, in particular, front-line squadrons during 1939–40 were having to bring new aircrew up to operational standard. The quantity and quality problem was not solved until the first products of the Empire Air Training Scheme arrived on operational squadrons in any numbers (towards the end of 1941). By the terms of the Ottawa Agreement, ratified in December 1939, Canada agreed to train Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders in 13 Elementary Flying Training Schools, 16 Advanced Flying Training Schools, 10 Air Observer Schools, 10 Bombing and Gunnery Schools and two Air Navigation Schools. In addition, Australia and New Zealand provided an additional 29 elementary flying schools.

This was the depth of training organisation needed to support the RAF’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East, but even when this was fully functional, deficiencies in the training of aircrew personnel were still apparent. One of the greatest problems was preparing bomber aircrews adequately for the type of missions they would face once they reached their operational squadrons. It was one thing for individual crew members to reach a standard of proficiency in a training type of aircraft; it was quite another to reach a point where an aircrew, as a unit, felt comfortable in the type of aircraft they would take into battle. So, the problem facing Bomber Command was twofold: first, ‘converting’ crews from their training aircraft to the types they would fly in combat, and, second, crew-building.

Shortly after the war broke out, the AOC-in-C of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt, took the bold step of rolling up 13 of the 33 operational bomber squadrons to form the basis of what would become known as Operational Training Units.

At these OTUs the products of the various training schools would come together, and the process of crew-building was described by one former bomb-aimer, Miles Tripp, in this way:

‘On the first day, men were sent to a large hangar and told it was up to them to form crews among themselves; those who were too sensitive, diffident or withdrawn to respond to these conditions would eventually be crewed up with others of similar temperament. This arbitrary collision of strangers was basically a marriage market and yet the choice of a good flying partner was far more important than a good wife. You couldn’t divorce your crew, and you could die if one of them wasn’t up to his job at a critical moment.’

Once crews had formed, the following weeks were spent on cross-country, night-flying and navigational exercises, and practice bombing, and it was hoped that any serious weaknesses among the new crew would manifest themselves at this point, rather than on operations. Miles Tripp found that his bomb-aiming skills were not up to standard when he reached his OTU, and he was held back for additional instruction.

But he also found out that the gunner in his crew had poor eyesight – only luck and bluff had secured his place at the OTU – and his navigator had failed on one of the cross-country exercises. These types of deficiency could be identified at this stage of final training, but there was always one variable that would not be known until the crews reached operational squadrons: how individual members would cope with combat stress.

For the first two years of the war, crews could pass directly from this training to their operational squadrons, because the aircraft being used by the OTUs were generally of the same type as those on the front-line squadrons. However, with the introduction of the new generation of four-engined bombers, such as the Lancaster and Halifax, it was realised that new crews also required ‘conversion’ on to these more complex aircraft. So a Conversion Unit course lasting two weeks was added to the OTU programme. In sum, Operational Training gave crews a fighting chance of survival once they joined the front line, but the organisation was not without its flaws. It was acknowledged after a time that the most valuable instructors were those men who had seen recent operational flying, but such men were hard to obtain because of the pressures of maintaining the offensive against Germany. This was particularly the case at the start of the campaign in 1940–41. The problem was solved partially in 1941 by the Air Ministry’s setting operational tours at 200 hours, after which an individual would have six months’ rest, usually instructing at an OTU. Another difficulty arose when the new generation of bombers entered service, and there was great reluctance to withdraw these types from the front line. Many of those crews destined ultimately to serve in Lancaster squadrons found that most of their conversion training actually occurred on Halifaxes or Stirlings.

Pressure on the training organisation was relieved to a certain extent in the early part of 1942 when the Air Ministry did away with the policy of having two pilots per bomber.

From this point, a heavy bomber would have just a single pilot. Pressure on the OTUs was also relieved somewhat by the establishment of Advanced Flying Training Schools and Personnel Reception Centres, which undertook refresher training for those aircrew trainees recently arrived from overseas Empire Air Training Schools.

It was often at this point that the extra training revealed weaknesses in aircrew skills, and it was common to see pilots being re-graded and sent off for navigation training. In fact, only 64 per cent of those who started flying training as pilots ended up as pilots.

At certain points in the war, there were also shortfalls in other aircrew trades, so that even those judged to be good pilots could sometimes find themselves retraining in another role. One such was Walter Thompson, who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941 and underwent pilot training. On arrival in Britain, he was asked what type of flying he preferred:

‘They said that those who did best would have first choice. I chose night-fighters first, Coastal Command ship-fighters second and bombers third. I had worked diligently at flying and ground school, and graduated first in the class. On the 10th day of July 1942, my flying log book was endorsed… “proficiency as pilot on type – Above Average”. What more could one ask? Then the world collapsed! I was told that I had received a high mark in Navigation and was, therefore, posted to commence a Navigation Instructor’s course at the Central Navigation School at Cranage. As simple as that!’

Even after the inception of Operational Training and these other measures, the relative inexperience of crews meant that large numbers of crews were lost in flying accidents, either at OTUs or shortly after arriving on operational squadrons. Lord Mackie, who joined the RAF shortly after the war broke out, recalled that three out of the six crews on his OTU course had been lost in accidents.

Throughout the war 8,117 men were lost in non-operational flying accidents, and 3,985 were seriously wounded. Compared with combat losses (49,585), this was a high percentage.