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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ