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

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