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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ