Читать книгу The Great World War 1914–1945: 1. Lightning Strikes Twice - John Bourne - Страница 29

Christina Goulter

‘The principal operational elements in the strategic air offensive are: first, the calibre of the crews, which is a question of selection, training, experience, leadership and fighting spirit; secondly, the performance of the aircraft and of the equipment and bases upon which they depend; thirdly, the weather; fourthly, the tactical methods and, fifthly, the nature of the enemy opposition.’¹

The authors of the British official history, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945, which remains the best single work on the subject, acknowledged the importance of the human element in this campaign. This acknowledgement was overdue. The decades following the Second World War were dominated by interest in the technological and scientific contributions to Allied victory, and the development of nuclear weapons merely reinforced the idea that science had done away with the need for the clash of massed armies. The idea that all operational problems could be subjected to and solved by scientific principles and the application of technology was a particularly strong thread in US military thinking after 1945, and this has persisted, in spite of the Vietnam experience, which demonstrated that the hi-tech nation does not always win. In Britain such ideas were less strong, for reasons of economy and the fact that the nation was engaged in more counter-insurgency and brush-fire wars, but in both countries there was a tendency to de-emphasise the contribution of the individual and to emphasise the big picture, in which nuclear strategy in a bi-polar world was the prime concern.

Although Vietnam was not Britain’s war, it had a profound effect on the way most of the world has thought about war, especially its human face. So, the ground was fertile for the proliferation of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical accounts of individual war experience, especially from the pens of the Second World War’s aviators. What has been lacking, however, is the type of study that examines aircrew experience in the round: what motivated men, in general, to volunteer for aircrew service; whether their training equipped them adequately for the job they had to do; the contrast between expectation and combat reality; combat stress; and, finally, the re-adjustment to civilian life.

These are universal questions, which are valid for any combat flying under consideration, and, because we are dealing with the human element, there are striking similarities between apparently very different wars. Thus we are able to observe many parallels between the aircrew experiences of the First and Second World Wars, even though, some would say, the technological advances during the intervening time meant that the nature of the war differed substantially between the two conflicts.

Whether we are talking about historical examples or today, a prime motivation for joining the air force has undoubtedly been the glamour associated with aviation. This was certainly true of the First and Second World Wars, when aviation was a new and exciting science, and interest in the ‘third dimension’ pervaded society at large. For those who were coming from Allied countries, there was the added excitement of an overseas deployment. A New Zealand pilot reflected that he and his friends joining the Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1939 were ‘moved more by the spirit of adventure’ and a need to validate their manhood ‘than by the burnings of patriotism’, although, invariably, this developed and ‘loyalty shone bright’.²

What is also almost universally true is that men volunteered for flying duties because they had their sights on becoming pilots, rather than other aircrew trades. To be a pilot was glamorous; to be an observer, navigator, wireless operator or gunner was not. So, almost without exception, those who joined to fly joined to be pilots, and, within the pilot hierarchy, to be a fighter pilot always held the greatest cachet. However, there were no guarantees in either the First or Second World War that those wishing to be pilots would necessarily end up as pilots. Depending on the aircrew selection process, or simple supply and demand, a pilot candidate could find himself channelled into other aircrew trades.

Those who volunteered to fly in one of the air services in the First World War had witnessed aviation’s extraordinarily rapid development, from the Wright Brothers’ 1903 flight of a few hundred yards to bombing aircraft capable of round journeys of hundreds of miles by the middle of the war. In Britain, Blériot’s flight across the Channel in the summer of 1909 captivated the nation, and it was from this point, rather than later in the 1920s, that Britain became ‘air minded’.³ Few seemed to doubt that those nations possessing air power would fail to use it in the next war, and now that Britain was apparently within easy reach of potential aggressors, steps were taken by the Committee of Imperial Defence to establish a British air service. When the Royal Flying Corps was formed in April 1912 (originally with two branches, naval and military), there was no shortage of recruits.⁴ Many would go on to fill senior positions in the RAF, most prominent among whom were Hugh Trenchard, Arthur Longmore, Sholto Douglas, and John Slessor. What these men, and other more junior flying personnel, had in common when they joined up was a driving ambition to fly. Their recollections record their fascination and wonderment as they commenced their initial training.⁵

Later generations have been drawn to aviation for the same reasons, but recruits of the late 1930s and early years of the Second World War also had a desire to avoid the horrors of trench warfare, which had consumed their fathers’ generation. Although war experience after 1939 quickly demonstrated that service in the Air Force was not necessarily a safer option than service with the Army or the Navy, the perception during the 1930s was that one’s chances of surviving a war were far greater in the air, and that the quality of life, in the meantime, would be superior. A former Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps expressed it in this way:

‘When we were flying at about 17,000 feet, it gave you a wonderful feeling of exhilaration. You were sort of, “I’m the King of the Castle”. You were up there and you were right out of the war. I’d been in the infantry and we were always lousy, filthy dirty and often hungry, whereas in the Flying Corps it was a gentleman’s life. You slept in a bed, put on pyjamas every night. You had a decent mess to come back to… So, altogether, it was much more pleasant.’⁶

Some aircrew candidates also believed that air power offered a more humane way to wage war, and this view was particularly prevalent among Americans in the 1930s. Not only did many Americans within the US Army Air Corps (and, later, the US Army Air Forces) genuinely believe that the US possessed the technological means to perform precision bombing, and would, therefore, be able to realise Billy Mitchell’s vision of attacks on key nodes within an enemy industrial infrastructure, but there was also the view that precision instruments offered the means to avoid civilian casualties. According to one author, this satisfied the ‘deep-seated American need for the moral high ground in war, while satisfying an American hunger for technological achievement’.⁷

Regardless of nationality, many aircrew candidates also seem to have believed that the air service offered the greatest possibility of a quick, decisive victory. Prior to the First World War, there were those who looked at the potential of aircraft in the military sphere and felt that aircraft represented a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), even if it was not expressed in this way. One such was a Major Herbert Musgrave, who transferred from the Royal Engineers to the Royal Flying Corps. He was closely involved with aeronautical research, and his work on wireless telegraphy and bomb aiming, in particular, laid the foundation for the long-range operations undertaken during the war. Musgrave felt that the impending war would be ‘the hardest, fiercest, and bloodiest struggle’ experienced to date, and that aviation would play a decisive role.⁸ However, the idea that aircraft could deliver the ‘knock-out blow’ gained most currency during the inter-war period. Even though there was very little in the First World War experience to indicate that air power would be able to deliver the quick, decisive victory, strategic bombing theory dominated air power doctrine. In Britain, as a number of scholars have already demonstrated, the pressures of budgetary constraint and inter-service rivalry, which threatened the independent existence of the RAF, led to increasingly grandiose claims being made for air power. Chief of Air Staff Trenchard’s debates with the Navy were publicised in the national press, and added to the ‘air-mindedness’ of the country. Air power’s overwhelming success in Britain’s empire policing role, followed by a series of bombing assaults on populated centres overseas by other air power nations (notably Japan against Shanghai in 1932 and combined Fascist forces against Guernica in 1937), merely reinforced the public’s belief that the next war would be dominated by massed aerial attack. So, although most aircrew candidates in the late 1930s and early war years volunteered with the hope of becoming fighter pilots, it was widely accepted that the bomber would decide the outcome of the next war.⁹

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.¹⁰ 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.¹¹ 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’.¹² 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.¹³ 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.¹⁴ 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.¹⁵ 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.¹⁶

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.¹⁷

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.¹⁸

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.’¹⁹

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.²⁰ 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.’²¹

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.²² 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.²³ 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.²⁴

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.²⁵

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.²⁶ 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.²⁷

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).²⁸ 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.²⁹ Similarly, virtually all the bombsights and bombing manuals were drawn from Admiralty sources.³⁰

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.³¹

The RAF’s expansion between 1934 and 1939 aimed at increasing the frontline aircraft establishment at home from 547 to at least 1,780.³² 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.³³

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.³⁴ 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.³⁵ 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.³⁶

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 1941.³⁷

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.³⁸

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.³⁹

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.⁴⁰ 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.’⁴¹

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.⁴² 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.⁴³

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.⁴⁴

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.⁴⁵ 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.⁴⁶ 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.⁴⁷ 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!’⁴⁸

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.⁴⁹ 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.⁵⁰ As Brooke-Popham found in the First World War, heavy combat losses were often followed by a high accident rate, as more inexperienced crews entered the front line.⁵¹ Inexperienced aircrew were not popular additions to squadrons, especially if an established crew had to find a replacement for one of its members. One Sergeant Air Gunner recalled his posting to 10 Squadron at Leeming in September 1941.⁵² His first operations were flown with a crew of sergeants who had already done several sorties. They did not speak to him all the way to the target and all the way back, and, on one occasion, he thought that they must have all baled out but he was too frightened to switch on his intercom and ask. This attitude towards new arrivals was endemic, as ‘green’ crew were inclined to make mistakes when subjected to the physical and psychological stress associated with the first few operations. A former Flight Sergeant in 75 (New Zealand) Squadron commented that one mission was a complete disaster for his aircraft because of a ‘green’ crew member, and how his aircraft was only just able to return to base.⁵³

As good as the training organisation had become by the mid-war period, it could never fully prepare aircrew for operational reality. However, as in any war, the contrast between doctrinal expectation and wartime reality was greatest at the start of the war. As the official historians comment:

‘…when war came in 1939, Bomber Command was not trained or equipped either to penetrate into enemy territory by day or to find its target areas, let alone its targets, by night. There were, of course, some crews [who] had reached higher standards of navigation, bomb-aiming and gunnery. But the character of their aircraft and guns meant that it was impossible for them, however skilful and brave they might be, to face the enemy over his own territory in daytime.’⁵⁴

The first two years of the war saw the skies being darkened by all the doctrinal chickens coming home to roost. The effects of dogma and budgetary constraint were most apparent in the quality of aircraft and supporting technologies.

The aircraft that would have to carry the offensive to Germany were either obsolescent or obsolete (Hampden, Wellington, Whitley). All these aircraft, but especially the Hampden, were notorious for their lack of crew comfort. Crews operating the Hampden were quick to christen it the ‘Flying Coffin’. One member of 106 Squadron described the difficulties posed by the cramped conditions in the aircraft:

‘… if the pilot was hit or incapacitated, the second pilot – who also carried out the duties of bomb-aimer and navigator as well as being reserve pilot – had to drag him out from his seat by pulling him backwards out of his position, and then crawl into the pilot’s position; a feat which… called for a combination of strength, dexterity, and a blind faith that the aircraft would stay on an even plane during which time this hazardous operation was accomplished.’⁵⁵

The Hampden also had a particularly draughty cockpit, and crews would return from operations numb with the cold. Frostbite was common among the crews of all these early bombers, which had rudimentary heating systems prone to failure. Having to operate at altitudes of between 15,000 and 20,000 feet, temperatures fell as low as -30 degrees C. Crews were compelled to wear bulky and restrictive clothing, and the extreme cold also affected the oxygen equipment, so that even the simplest tasks became almost impossible. A particularly graphic account exists of a Whitley crew engaged in leaflet-dropping over Frankfurt:

‘Everyone was frozen, and had no means of alleviating their distress. The navigator and Commanding Officer were butting their heads on the floor and navigation table in an endeavour to experience some other form of pain as a relief from the awful feeling of frostbite and lack of oxygen.’⁵⁶

In this respect, aircrew conditions had not improved markedly over the First World War flying in open cockpits.⁵⁷

Nor had there been any advancement in aids to navigation or bomb-aiming. At the start of the war dead-reckoning and astro-navigation were the basis of long-range navigation. The early crews had none of the radar navigational aids that ultimately appeared in Bomber Command, such as ‘Gee’ and ‘H2S’. The inter-war Air Staff had shown great indifference to, and ignorance of, long-range navigation problems, and this was highlighted by none other than Arthur Harris, when he was Deputy Director of the Plans Division in 1936:

‘The trouble with service navigation in the past has been the lack of knowledge and of interest in the subject evinced by senior officers in the service… pilotage and “Bradshawing” have quite wrongly been considered as adequate substitutes for real navigation.’⁵⁸

There were many senior officers who shared the opinion of the Deputy Director of Staff Duties, Group Captain (later Air Vice-Marshal) F. H. Maynard, that navigation over long distances was a ‘comparatively simple’ exercise.⁵⁹ When changes to the navigational syllabus were proposed in 1938, this was at the behest of Coastal Command, but few of the revisions were in place by the time war broke out. As late as 1941, to provide bomber crews with an accurate target position before take-off was thought to be sufficient. But operations very quickly demonstrated that if training and equipment were lacking, such information was of little use.

The extent of navigational error during many of these early operations is illustrated by one account of 7–8 March 1940, when Whitleys of 77 Squadron were returning from a mission over Poland. A 77 Squadron aircraft flew for 11 hours using dead-reckoning navigation before making an emergency landing in an area calculated to be near its base at Villeneuve, some 30 miles south-east of Paris. The crew was astonished to find that the language spoken by a group of farmworkers gathering around the aircraft was German. It was only then that they realised the enormity of their navigational error, and only just succeeded in restarting the Whitley’s engines as enemy troops arrived.⁶⁰ This is reminiscent of similar navigational problems faced by the RFC’s bombing crews in the First World War. For example, in December 1917, 55 Squadron lost half of its formation during one bombing operation because the crews lost their way when they were forced to navigate above cloud. Only the flight commander was able to locate the home aerodrome and land safely.⁶¹ As the official historians commented, ‘What is surprising about the years before 1942 is not that so many crews failed to find their targets, but that more of them did not fail to find England on their return.’⁶²

Even if aircrews succeeded in locating their targets, there was no guarantee that they would be able to hit them. The early aircrews of the Second World War were reliant upon bombsights developed by the previous generation. The most common was the Course Setting Bombsight, which dated from the closing stages of the First World War, and this was only partially automatic, so that the final settings had to be done manually by the bomb-aimer in the run-up to the target. The bombsight demanded that the aircraft be kept on a straight and level approach to the target, as the slightest deviations in the air resulted in large errors on the ground, so that crews were compelled to hold their nerve if they wanted to hit a target accurately. As a consequence, aircraft fell easy prey to enemy fighters and flak, as one 10 Squadron Whitley crew found during May 1940 when they attempted to hit an oil installation at Bremen. In order to have a steady run-up to the target, the pilot made six passes over the city at less than 1,000 feet, coming under heavy fire each time. When the aircraft returned to its Yorkshire base, 700 holes were found in the fuselage.⁶³

The real impetus to improve navigational and bomb aiming standards came with the findings of an independent report into bombing accuracy instituted by Churchill’s Scientific Adviser, Lord Cherwell. The so-called Butt report, issued in the autumn of 1941, concluded that of all the aircraft claiming to have attacked their targets, only one-third had arrived within 5 miles of them. Over the Ruhr, the proportion fell to one-tenth because of the heightened anti-aircraft defences and industrial haze obscuring targets.⁶⁴ In combination with developing Operational Research techniques, this study led to a more frank approach to operational problems experienced by aircrews. Not only was there subsequently far greater research and development into aids to navigation and bomb-aiming, which led to the introduction of radar equipment such as H2S, improved bombsights such as the Stabilised Vector Bombsight known as Mark XIV, and the specialist navigational group in Bomber Command known as the Pathfinders, but there was also a far greater understanding of the physical and psychological stresses placed on aircrew.⁶⁵

Like so many other facets of the air war, the First World War experience cast its long shadow also in relation to attitudes towards combat stress. In the First War the prevailing view was that there was something cowardly about squadrons who lacked an offensive spirit or individuals who broke down under the strain of operations.⁶⁶ Trenchard, who was known for his advocacy of an offensive spirit, admonished one of his bombing squadrons in 1918 for having ‘naval ideas’, by which he meant the squadron was being overly cautious. The RNAS had developed a reputation for not flying if the weather conditions were considered marginal, quite sensibly, whereas the RFC, and then the RAF under Trenchard, had the ‘habit of flying whenever possible, taking risks, expecting losses, and hoping for the best’.⁶⁷ The CO of the bombing squadron concerned (which had been in the RNAS) disagreed fundamentally with Trenchard: ‘I think the question of morale in a squadron is very important and if a squadron does a great deal of work without losing any machines, it is doing as good work as a squadron which is doing slightly better work, but at a high cost of machines and personnel and consequently morale.’⁶⁸ As time went on, Trenchard’s views prevailed, and what seems to have been the wise caution exhibited by the old naval squadrons evaporated.

After the First World War there was no attempt by the Air Ministry to examine the question of combat stress, as it was not considered an issue. Nor did the official historians of the air war devote any attention to the subject. The closest they came was a page and a half on ‘the spirit of the pilot’, in which Walter Raleigh spoke of Trenchard’s belief that the morale of the air service depended on individual pilots being positive in everything they did: ‘To think only of dangers and drawbacks, to make much of the points in which the Germans had attained a fleeting superiority, to lay stress on the imperfections of our own equipment – all this, [Trenchard] knew, was to invite defeat.’⁶⁹ There seems to have been little appreciation of the unnatural stresses placed on aircrews, or, indeed, the fighting man on the ground, during the First World War. But, for the airman, there was not even a term equating to ‘shell shock’. Evidently it was felt that aircrew during the First World War did not suffer from combat stress, and this might have arisen because aviators were removed from the horrors of the land war. The fact that men volunteered for flying duties, which, in any case, were seen as glamorous, would not have helped.

Therefore, combat stress in the early part of the Second World War was little understood. Before May 1941 there was no conception of a limited tour of duty; aircrews continued to serve until they were killed, wounded or taken off flying operations for some specific reason. There was no organised investigation into flying stress among aircrews until the end of 1940, and the term ‘flying stress’ was not coined until the very end of that year. Flying stress was then used to describe a condition that might be observed in an aircrew member as a result of an abnormal strain being placed on an individual. Those who broke down as a result of this strain were categorised into three principal groups. The first comprised those men who were temperamentally unfit for flying duties. ‘These men are brave, and prove it by determined and unavailing effort to make good. They are overcome by fear of their environment and not by fear of the enemy.’⁷⁰ Such men, it was thought, would break down in the space of five to ten missions, and their breakdown was believed to be permanent. The second type identified was the individual with less than average capacity for sustained effort. He was described as a ‘good type’ who undertook operational flying successfully, but who had less than average capacity for sustained effort on such duties. Being less able, he was more likely to be under strain. The third category covered the man with average or better than average capacity for sustained effort, but who collapsed suddenly, usually after a period of sustained fatigue.

In addition to these categories there were two others, which sought to explain the failings of men considered to be outside the three principal groupings. There was the ‘constitutionally unsuitable for flying duty’ type. ‘These men are not brave, and they seek to evade the danger and discomfort of operational duty through any door of escape.’⁷¹ Such men were thought to break down after one to five missions, and they were considered a ‘serious danger to morale’. The other type was called the ‘fair weather’ individual, who used as a means of escaping from operational duties an alleged dislike of a particular aircraft or environment, which he attempted to use as a justification for asking to be transferred. He, too, was described as a serious threat to morale.

A good indication that the phenomenon of flying stress was not fully understood at this stage is suggested by the fact that most of the men listed as unfit for flying duties in the period 1 April to 31 December 1940 did not fall into the three categories of unfitness for flying caused by ‘real’ factors, but rather had their records endorsed ‘LMF’ (Lack of Moral Fibre), the term for cowardice.⁷² Accusations of LMF were levelled on a regular basis during the first half of the war. Aircrews who returned early from operations, claiming mechanical failure or similar in their aircraft, were liable to be labelled LMF until their reports were corroborated by groundcrew inspection of the aircraft.⁷³ The accusation of cowardice was made usually within the confines of the squadron or the station, but it could come from higher levels. For instance, it was reported at the end of 1941 that a Squadron Leader from a Blenheim unit ordered a formation to return to base without dropping its bombs after they failed to find a target, mainly as a result of low cloud.⁷⁴ On return to base, he was asked why he had not dropped his bombs on Heligoland, to which he replied that at such a low altitude he did not think it advisable to do so owing to the wastage of aircraft likely to occur. The Air Marshal conducting the interview used the words, ‘Yellow, were you?’, and put an end to the questioning. Shortly after this incident, the Squadron Leader was ordered to send out his squadron to attack Heligoland, from which operation only two aircraft returned.⁷⁵ This particular incident was brought to the attention of the Chief of Air Staff Portal by the Minister of Aircraft Production, Moore-Brabazon, in December 1940. Unfortunately, no reply can be found, and it is not clear from what remains of Portal’s private correspondence as to what his views were on the subject of LMF. What can be said is that there was no perceptible change in attitude towards the subject of cowardice until 1943, and this was due to the more rigorous investigation into the problem of flying stress, for which much of the credit must go to the Air Member for Personnel appointed in August 1942, Air Marshal Bertine Sutton, who stated that he deplored the term ‘Lack of Morale Fibre’.⁷⁶

A study of combat stress in the operational commands was begun in 1942, under Air Vice-Marshal Sir Charles Symonds, who was a consultant in neuro-psychiatry, and a Wing Commander Denis Williams. They submitted their first report in December of that year, and their main finding was that aircrew stress was caused by the combination of fear and fatigue.⁷⁷ Many causes of fatigue are fairly obvious: the length of sortie, the extremely low temperatures, having to concentrate throughout on instruments or the night sky, the effects of low oxygen, etc. However, there were the less tangible causes of aircrew fatigue, such as the strain caused by concern for wives or other relatives, and dependants, should they be killed or incapacitated.

Meanwhile, fear was seen to have many elements. The fear of death or injury manifested itself in numerous ways, depending on the individual, but there were common tell-tale signs.⁷⁸ Many former aircrew recounted the atmosphere in messes before operations, how many men were unable to eat and how vomiting became a daily occurrence. Many referred to the congestion in ablution blocks, as men visited the toilet for the umpteenth time before an operation. Many referred to the distinctive ‘smell of fear’ that pervaded dispersal areas and transports to the aircraft. Then there was the fear of letting down the other crew members, or letting down a commanding officer. Many, including Miles Tripp, feared being labelled LMF. After an attack of nerves during a mission over Cologne, he was anxious to go on another as soon as possible, reasoning that it was like falling off a horse or having a car accident, when one had to get back in the saddle or back into the driving seat as soon as possible.⁷⁹

For some aircrew, fear and general stress were manageable until one particular event caused them to snap, if momentarily, like Miles Tripp. A number of former aircrew commented that they had coped with fear and stress over many months of operations, but how they were thrown off balance by the death of a friend in the squadron, the sight of an empty bunk bed next to them, or seeing mutilated bodies. One former navigator recalled having seen a bomber make an emergency landing at his base, and how groundcrews had to use high-pressure hoses to clean out the rear gun turret after the gunner was shot to pieces by an enemy fighter.⁸⁰

Methods of coping with fear and general stress varied. Some men became superstitious and could be seen going through pre-flight rituals. Those of a religious persuasion carried rosaries or crosses. Heavy drinking and absorption in mess social life were also common, as was living for the day. Most aircrew abandoned long-term planning and concentrated on day-to-day existence.⁸¹ But there were also mechanisms commanding officers could employ to boost morale and alleviate stress, and Symonds and Williams made a number of recommendations.⁸² First, it was emphasised that it was very important for a commanding officer to explain the purpose of missions and where they fitted into the overall campaign, as far as OPSEC would allow. Second, it was vitally important for the results of missions to be articulated to the crews, especially the success stories, and recognition of hard-won success by a telegram from Command or Group HQ level was considered essential. However, it was felt that the most valuable praise was that from the immediate commanding officer at squadron or station level. The award of medals or other decorations was also seen as a significant factor in the maintenance of good morale.

Keeping the crews at the sharp end apprised of their contribution to the whole effort does appear to have been one of the keys to maintaining Bomber Command’s morale as a whole at a reasonable level. Whatever criticisms we may level at Arthur Harris for his lack of strategic vision and dogmatism over the merits of area versus precision bombing, he was very popular with the aircrews because he believed in speaking frankly about Bomber Command’s successes and failures, and his enthusiasm and determination filtered right down to grass-roots level. Even when Bomber Command was facing crippling losses during 1943 and 1944 during the Battles of Berlin and the Ruhr, when a heavy bomber crew faced less than a 44 per cent chance of surviving a first tour of operations, Harris remained a popular C-in-C. One former Right Sergeant said of him: ‘We had all the confidence in the world in his strategy. We felt that we and we alone in Bomber Command were winning the war.’⁸³ It required a unique type of leadership to convince aircrews to keep on putting themselves in harm’s way, with little chance of survival. Harris had that ability, and his leadership style is worthy of a much larger study.⁸⁴ Harris, for his part, had tremendous admiration for the bomber crews under his command. He said:

‘There are no words with which I can do justice to the aircrew who fought under my command. There is no parallel in warfare to such courage and determination in the face of danger over so prolonged a period, of danger which at times was so great that scarcely one man in three could expect to survive his tour of thirty operations… It was, moreover, a clear and highly conscious courage, by which the risk was taken with calm forethought, for their aircrew were all highly skilled men, much above the average in education, who had to understand every aspect and detail of their task. It was, furthermore, the courage of the small hours, of men virtually alone, for at his battle station the airman is virtually alone. It was the courage of men with long-drawn apprehensions of daily “going over the top”.’⁸⁵

It is interesting that Harris chose to use a First World War image, and it was entirely fitting, given the enormous casualty rate in Bomber Command (49,585 killed in combat, with another 8,117 lost in non-operational flying), which paralleled 1914–18’s battlefield losses.⁸⁶ Bomber Command’s own record demonstrated that to serve as aircrew was anything but a safe option. Further, it imposed unnatural strains on individuals, and demanded levels of technical proficiency largely unparalleled in the other services. As is often the case, many of the fundamental principles of strategic bombing were identified, at least by the RNAS, in the First World War, but were subsequently forgotten, so that a second generation of airmen had painfully to relearn the lessons. For this reason, and the fact that we are dealing with human endeavour, there were many parallels between the First and Second World War experiences.