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The R.A.F., as an independent fighting service, was conceived out of the widespread indignation that swept the country when London was bombed in the early summer of 1917. It was born eleven months later after an inquiry into the defence and co-ordination of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.
General Jan Christian Smuts, the South African soldier and statesman, conducted the investigation at the request of the Prime Minister, Lloyd George.
Smuts concluded his report by recommending the amalgamation of all the air services as a matter of urgency and the creation of an Air Ministry to control and administer all matters connected with air warfare. Strenuous protests were made by the War Office and the Admiralty. On April 1st, 1918, the autonomous and independent Royal Air Force was born.
At the armistice in November 30,122 officers and 263,410 other ranks were serving in the R.A.F. It had 22,000 planes flying with 188 operational squadrons and 199 training units from 675 airfields and stations. With aircraft like the Sopwith Snipe, the D.H.9A and the Handley Page V/1500 its technical superiority was unrivalled.
All three services were shorn of their wartime strength with remarkable alacrity. By the end of 1919 the most powerful air force in the world had been whittled down to 31,500 officers and men, 371 aircraft and twelve squadrons. It would have ceased to exist altogether if the Army, and particularly the Navy, had found a way of bringing their former members back to their respective folds.
To rescue the young service came a man known to posterity as ‘The Father of the Royal Air Force’. Marshal of the R.A.F. Viscount Trenchard, then Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, was tall, broad-shouldered, with shaggy eyebrows and a deep voice that had earned him the nickname of ‘Boom’. He had already commanded the Royal Flying Corps and the Independent Bomber Force created to attack strategic targets in Germany when he became the R.A.F.’s first Chief of Staff.
Trenchard saw that a powerful air force could be moulded into a deterrent against future wars. It was he who provided the entire basis on which the Air Force was to develop and on which it was eventually to be tested in the Battle of Britain. His plan covered every aspect of development—the provision of aircraft, air and ground crew training, staff training and the organisation for control.
The mould in which the post-war R.A.F. was cast had its beginnings in a Trenchard memorandum presented to Parliament by Mr. Winston Churchill on December 11th, 1919, as a White Paper. This described in detail the form the new service should take and the duties it should perform. The scheme which covered the whole field of future development was to prove the model for most air forces of the world and to stand the test of time. With few facts and little history for guidance he laid a sound foundation. When in 1936 the R.A.F. opened a chapter of great expansion it was on the sixteen-year-old White Paper that the additions to the structure were built.
The plan aimed to create little more than a skeleton force which would lend itself easily to expansion. Squadrons were reduced to the bare minimum of eighteen, and two seaplane units overseas; a small number of squadrons specially trained in co-operation with the Army and Navy at home and one airship station. The main resources were concentrated on promoting research for which stations were set up to experiment with landplanes, seaplanes, torpedo aircraft and wireless.
The whole system of training for officers and men was intended as a standard one and it had no parallel in Germany. The Cadet College at Cranwell provided the initial training for men who were later to become the commanders of the Air Force, and the Staff College broadened their outlook in mid-career. Technical colleges at Halton, Buckinghamshire; Cranwell, Lincolnshire; and Flowerdown trained the ground crews. Flying training standards were laid down by the instructors of the Central Flying School who carried them through to other training schools.
It was intended to be flexible and to avoid over-specialisation. Schools of wireless, gunnery, and photography were provided for under the scheme, but officers and men were expected to gain experience in any type of squadron, and to move readily from one unit to another. Later on, as new technical discoveries were made and flying became more complicated, a need arose for expert knowledge and concentration by specialist officers upon certain subjects. This was still imposed upon a sound general training, so that no one should become too remote from the main task of flying, nor lack a working knowledge of the service. The system of training was laid down.
The Volunteer Reserve was one of the very few organisations not included in the Trenchard plan. Formed in 1936, it was to become an invaluable source of additional pilots.
Trainers for R.A.F. pilots in the thirties. Below a line-up of Hawker Harts. The trainer version of this famous day bomber first came into service in 1933 and was not superseded by the Harvard and Master until 1939. Above is a formation of Avro Tutors, a basic training type which first came into service in 1933
Other recommendations which were to be of vital importance twenty-one years later foreshadowed the creation of the Auxiliary Air Force, the university air squadrons and the short-service commission. Without these the expansion which was then required would have been impossible.
There was strong opposition to the creation of the Auxiliary Air Force at the outset, on the grounds that military aviation was too complicated and dangerous to be undertaken by amateurs on a part-time basis. But Trenchard’s forecast that it would provide an indispensable reinforcement for the regular squadrons of the R.A.F. was amply justified in the Battle of Britain.
The short-service-commission scheme took a man in at eighteen or nineteen, trained him and kept him in the Force for five years. With intensive training he became a proficient pilot in a year and a skilled one in two, so that five years was enough to ensure that the squadrons were adequately manned. The scheme created a first-class reserve of trained officers who were encouraged to return each year to fly and keep abreast of new techniques.
The R.A.F. was small immediately after the war but it was not idle. One of its occupations was to police regions not easily accessible by land forces. Eight squadrons and a small force of armoured cars which were sent out to the Iraq Protectorate allowed British Army strength there to be greatly reduced, for instance.
In the meantime the question of Britain’s own defence had cropped up at home. Two factors were responsible, the ascendancy of the bomber as a master-weapon and the fear that the disparity between the R.A.F. and neighbouring air forces might weaken Britain’s diplomatic hand.
The French Armée de l’Air had a striking force of 300 bombers and 300 fighters in France. Britain’s equivalent was three squadrons or less than forty aircraft.
Hurricane 1’s of 79 Squadron lined up at Biggin Hill for the 1939 Empire Air Day display
In the light of these considerations the Government agreed to the Air Ministry’s request for a leading role in home defence. In August 1922 a proposal for a metropolitan air force was agreed. This was to consist of fourteen bomber and nine fighter squadrons, the proportion of fighters to bombers reflecting the Air Staffs belief in the principle that the best defence is offence. Even then the force approved for the defence of the country did not come anywhere near to matching the 600 aircraft it was designed to oppose. The total establishment of twenty-three squadrons allowed for a strength of no more than 266 bombers and fighters.
The following year a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, under the chairmanship of Lord Salisbury, considered relations between the Navy and the Air Force and the place of air power in national defence. Its report disposed once and for all of attempts by the Army and the Navy to partition the R.A.F. The Committee also advocated the continued control of the naval air units by the Royal Air Force, a recommendation which infuriated the admirals and nearly brought down the Government.
The Government accepted the recommendation of the Committee including that for a Home Defence Air Force. This was to consist in the first instance of fifty-two squadrons ‘to be created with as little delay as possible’. They would add thirty-four to the authorised strength of the R.A.F. It was decided that the details of the organisation would be arranged with a view to possible subsequent expansion.
While fully safeguarding the existence of the R.A.F. this reflected the muddle-headedness of the politicians in power.
With his passion for economy Mr. Bonar Law, the Prime Minister, bent on cutting Government expenditure to the bone, appointed Sir Eric Geddes to head what came to be known as the anti-waste campaign. Geddes was loudly applauded each time he wielded his famous ‘axe’ against the fighting services. When the time came to implement the recommendations of the Salisbury Committee the Air Force had been so mauled by disarmament and crippled by the Geddes axe that to bring together the broken fragments and to build upon them was a task that involved a long-distance plan of great complexity made all the more difficult by the ‘ten-year rule’.
Adopted by Lloyd George’s coalition government, the ten-year rule was based on the assumption that, with Germany debarred by the Treaty of Versailles from making war-planes and submarines, it was safe to reduce the R.A.F. to a nucleus for ten years. This became ludicrous because until 1932 successive governments continued the policy effectively extending the ten years indefinitely.
It needed Trenchard’s determination to cut through the entanglements that surrounded an expansion programme calling for 394 bombers and 204 fighters by the end of 1928. A complicated task, it involved the recruitment of volunteers, their training and the organisation of all ground services. Many of the airfields which had been sold for a song only a few months earlier had to be bought back at great expense without compulsory powers and in the face of intense local opposition.
For five years the R.A.F. squadrons had to be content with planes left over from the war. Many of them continued in service until well into the 1930s.
A committee created in 1923 under Air Commodore J. M. Steel of the Air Ministry and Colonel W. B. Bartholomew from the War Office produced a plan for defence based on the assumption that any attack on Britain would be delivered across the Channel from the south and the south-east.
It consisted of a defensive belt fifteen miles deep running from Duxford, Cambridgeshire, to Devizes, Wiltshire, in a curve round London parallel to the coast. This belt was called the air fighting zone and it was sandwiched between an inner artillery zone, for the close defence of London, and an outer artillery zone whose purpose was to indicate the presence of the enemy formations and to break them before they reached the air fighting zone. Anti-aircraft artillery was to fire by day only. Night intruders were to be dealt with by fighters assisted by searchlights deployed in the inner artillery and aircraft fighting zones.
To allow the defending fighters time to reach combat heights distant sound locators on the coast and advanced observer posts on the fringes of the belt were to give advanced warning of an attack. During the attack the defence control system was to be kept informed of all friendly and hostile aircraft movements. Except for extensions of the belt beyond Devizes to the Bristol Channel and north from Duxford to the Fens this scheme was scarcely altered until the formation of Fighter Command in 1936. The extensions increased the number of sectors in the aircraft fighting zone from eight to ten. Each had a front of about fifteen miles containing the airfields from which the fighters would operate. Two squadrons were allotted to each of the sectors south and south-east of London. The remainder were given one apiece. Three squadrons were to be stationed on coastal aerodromes to attack and harass the enemy on the way to and from targets.
Spring 1939 and the R.A.F.’s Spitfire strength grows. Shown here is a complete line-up of the aircraft of 65 Squadron at Hornchurch. 65 were the sixth squadron to be equipped with the type, the first five being Nos. 19 and 66 (Duxford), No. 41 (Catterick), and Nos. 74 and 54 (Hornchurch)
In the light of later developments such as radar it is obvious that this system would have been quite unworkable without much more advanced devices than were then available. There were already indications, however, that science would have to provide new techniques if the Steel-Bartholomew plan was to supply an adequate defence.
All that could be used by way of a warning system were sound locators and visual detection by sky-scanning observers. The locators were mobile. They were reasonably effective when aircraft were within and just beyond earshot but they were quite inadequate for early warning.
Many other measures were considered and tried but none was satisfactory. In short, if the attacking forces could neither be signalled to the authorities in the estimated target areas nor plotted satisfactorily the task of interceptors was impossible.
To minimise these disadvantages another committee, under Major-General C. F. Romer, established a coastal chain of mobile sound locators and laid the foundations of the Observer Corps. But this did little to lift the burden of uncertainty from the shoulders of the R.A.F. The doubtful capacity of the fighters to hold off the enemy even if detected early gave rise to the famous Baldwinism, ‘The bomber will always get through’. It also nurtured Trenchard’s bias towards the doctrine that the first line of defence lay over an enemy’s airfields and aircraft factories. Fighters were vital to Trenchard’s architecture but he considered it was the bomber above all that held the key to air power.
A change in the defence structure was introduced in January 1925. Known as the Air Defence of Great Britain (A.D.G.B.), the new command included all air-defence units. It was divided into a fighting area and three bombing areas grouped geographically each with a commander. Air Marshal Sir John Salmond was the first air officer commanding-in-chief.
Fighting Area was further subdivided into advanced fighting squadrons, R.A.F., the ten aircraft sectors, and general officer commanding ground troops. The latter was responsible for the work of the inner and outer artillery zones, the Observer Corps and the technical working of all searchlights.
Harbours and coastal areas were outside A.D.G.B. The air-raid warning organisation which was responsible for collecting and collating raid information involved the three service ministries, the Post Office and the Board of Trade, which had jurisdiction over coastguard stations.
By 1925 relations with France improved and the threatened expansion of the Armée de l’Air appeared to have been shelved. It seemed, furthermore, that the rapprochement between France and Germany might pave the way to a decrease in the size of the European arsenals.
In Britain the outcome of these developments was the formation of a committee with Lord Birkenhead as chairman to consider the fifty-two-squadron scheme in the light of changing conditions. In November the committee recommended that although it should not be abandoned, the scheme need not be completed until 1935–6.
Trenchard objected strongly. Postponement would dislocate many of the carefully laid plans, but since there was no German Air Force, the Locarno Treaty was spreading the breath of peace through Europe and Mr. Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, was relentless in his demands for further economies, the Chief of the Air Staff had no alternative but to accept.
The brake had its compensations, however. The preliminary work on the programme was so extensive that it is doubtful whether the squadrons could have been formed on time without severely hindering the organisation and development of training. It also gave Trenchard the chance to create quality rather than quantity. The reduction of the R.A.F. after the First World War meant starting again from the beginning. Trenchard’s main fear was that failure to lay sound foundations might prejudice the high standard at which he aimed. The number of squadrons was never so important to him as the ability to expand them into a much greater air force in the future without sacrificing quality.
What Trenchard did not foresee, however, was that completion of the scheme would be postponed indefinitely, first by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s second Labour Government which added another two years to the programme and then by the ‘armament truce’ observed in Britain while the Disarmament Conference sat in Geneva between 1932 and 1934.
From the time the Salisbury programme was allowed to lapse in 1925 until the spring of 1934 world peace was assiduously pursued through the League of Nations. A series of plans, treaties and pacts were drawn up to discourage unprovoked attacks and in February 1932 the Disarmament Conference assembled in Geneva in a last attempt to establish a pledge of world security and peace. In 1933 Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, which, with Japan, resigned from the League of Nations. In May 1934, after lingering on, achieving nothing, the Conference broke up.
Because the bomber was seen as the ultimate weapon of destruction at that time, German and British military authorities subscribed in varying degree to a theory put forward by an Italian general, Giulio Douhet. This theory was that no effective defence could be devised against the bomber, and that all resources should be invested in it. The British saw that bombers would be able to strike specific military and industrial targets well within enemy territory on such a scale that civilian morale would soon be destroyed. The Germans regarded aircraft mainly as a sophisticated form of long-range artillery which must be subordinated to the land armies and used tactically to clear a path for the fast-moving armoured spearheads and motorised infantry.
Mainstay of the R.A.F.’s heavy bomber force in the thirties, the Vickers Virginia biplane was in service from 1924 until 1937. It had a maximum speed of 108 m.p.h. and a range of 985 miles. Three Lewis guns and 3,000 lb. of bombs comprised the armament
During the nine years of futile disarmament negotiations only the pageants and displays given by the R.A.F. kept it in the public eye. Its value as a first line of defence in any future war was almost disregarded. Likewise the aircraft industry, suffering through a shortage of orders, lost many skilled workers to other industries.
There was, of course, a small band of prophets to warn the nation of the consequences of failing to keep a strong air service. Among them was Mr. Winston Churchill, Member of Parliament for Woodford, Essex, who had just previously been Chancellor of the Exchequer. Even without his persistent warnings no one could ignore the dark signs of trouble gathering over Europe in 1934.
On July 19th the Government announced its intention of increasing the strength of the R.A.F. by forty-one squadrons. The expansion programme would take five years and it would increase the home defences from fifty-two squadrons to seventy-five, and add eight squadrons to the Fleet Air Air and the R.A.F. overseas. In all it authorised the enlargement of the total first-line strength at home and overseas to 1,304 aircraft by the spring of 1939.
Motions of censure were immediately tabled in both Houses of Parliament, but during the debate on July 30th Churchill drew attention to the danger of Germany’s growing strength in the air in no uncertain terms. Germany, he said, had violated the Versailles Treaty, and already possessed a military air force two-thirds as strong as Britain’s existing home defence. Furthermore, at the rate at which it was expanding, even if the proposals for increasing the R.A.F. were approved, the German Air Force would nearly equal the home defence force in numbers by the end of 1935, and exceed it substantially by 1936.
Once the Germans established a lead Britain might never be able to overtake them. Their civil aircraft were readily convertible to military duties. They had already overtaken Britain in the numbers of trained pilots and glider pilots.
Britain’s main fighter force in 1937 and 1938 relied on fixed undercarriage biplanes. A formation of Gloster Gauntlets of No. 32 Squadron airborne from Biggin Hill in May 1937. The Gauntlet was the last open cockpit fighter biplane to serve with the R.A.F. and it did not go out of service until 1939
It was one thing to be faced with a fleet of aircraft two-thirds of the first-line strength of the home defence squadrons, however, and quite another to be confronted with a trained military force of equivalent calibre. Few German military aircraft were then allotted to units. The secret Luftwaffe was still short of most of the essentials that constitute an air force as opposed to a collection of pilots and aircraft. The situation was worrying but not dangerous.
In the absence of any reliable information on German air strength no one was able to contradict Churchill. The censure motion was defeated and the R.A.F. was assured of its forty-one additional squadrons.
At this period the home defence force stood at forty-two squadrons containing 488 first-line aircraft. There were also at home four flying-boat squadrons for co-operation with the Navy, and five reconnaissance squadrons for co-operation with the Army. Overseas there were six squadrons in Egypt, the Sudan and Palestine, eight in India, five in Iraq, three in the Far East, one in Aden and one in Malta.
In war none of the overseas squadrons could be summoned home to strengthen the Air Defence of Great Britain as they would be hard pressed covering the vast areas to which they were assigned. Accordingly, they did not count in any comparison of strengths with Germany. Nor did the twelve squadrons and six flights of the Fleet Air arm which, though still under R.A.F. control, were at the disposal of the Navy.
Until 1934 the R.A.F. maintained between 29,000 and 30,000 officers and men by training sixty new pilots and 1,600 men a year. It was backed by an 11,000-strong regular reserve and the Auxiliary Air Force of 1,500. The first-line strength was built up by offering men completing short-service engagements extended terms of service on the active list. This expedient gave the R.A.F. a strength of 55,000 in 1937, and 118,000 in 1939.
A large proportion of short-service men was thus denied to the regular Reserve. This made it necessary to recruit a civilian reserve to train, like the auxiliaries, at week-ends and at two-week annual summer camps. The Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve was accordingly formed in 1936 to recruit some 800 youths a year for training as air crews.
By 1938 thirty-three volunteer reserve centres were established and by 1939 5,000 volunteers were serving as part-time air crew or in training. At that time all were non-commissioned officers. Many V.R. men were commissioned later. Aircrew, medical equipment and technical courses were established soon after the pilots began training in the spring of 1937. When war broke out the R.A.F. possessed an invaluable reservoir of manpower 63,000 strong. In June 1939 the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, designed to release men for aircrew and front-line ground duties, was formed. In 1949 this became the Women’s Royal Air Force.
Until 1934 all pilot training was undertaken by the Royal Air Force but the facilities available were inadequate to meet the requirements imposed by expansion. Elementary flying training was therefore farmed out to civilian flying schools, thirteen of which were in operation by 1936. In addition, five service flying training schools were established. These were run by the R.A.F. to provide advanced training.
When in 1935 training schemes for the Dominions were proposed Australia and New Zealand readily responded by recruiting and training a number of their own people as pilots for the R.A.F. in addition to their own services. Canada did not respond.
When Mr. Mackenzie King, the Canadian Prime Minister, visited Britain for the Coronation of King George VI and the Imperial Conference in 1937, Lord Swinton, Secretary of State for Air, put the plan before him. It was vehemently rejected on the ground that it would commit Canada to war. Backed by Baldwin, Swinton pressed the proposal, offering to pay for the whole commitment including the aircraft. He pointed out that the other Dominion countries were co-operating. This made King more obstinate. He finally threatened to walk out of the Imperial Conference if the matter were even raised or discussed.
That the British Government were not able to put forward their proposals formally, enabled King to say later that the training scheme was never suggested to the Canadian Government before the war.
Beyond training fifty pilots a year, Canada undertook no further commitments for the R.A.F. until December 17th, 1939, when the Empire Air Training Scheme was agreed in Ottawa. Under the agreement Britain supplied all the aircraft and a nucleus of skilled men. The dominions supplied the rest.
Canada, training Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and a small number of pupils from Britain and Newfoundland, built up thirteen elementary and sixteen service flying training schools, ten air observer, ten bombing and gunnery and two air navigation schools. Australia and New Zealand were too far from Britain to make the training of British citizens there a practicable proposition. Nine elementary, seven service flying training schools, four air observer and four bombing and gunnery schools were formed in Australia, and three elementary and two service flying training schools in New Zealand to train their own men.
Because the earlier stages in flying training were likely to be cramped by enemy action and lack of space, it was clear that some training scheme for British nationals would have to be established abroad. Southern Rhodesia responded immediately by offering to accommodate, administer and partially pay for three service flying training schools staffed and run principally by the R.A.F. At the end of December 1939 South Africa invited the R.A.F. to share in her expanding training organisation.
The first courses started in Canada, Australia and New Zealand on April 29th, 1940. This was too late to help Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain.
In the meantime the expansion programmes of 1934 and 1935 made the administration of the R.A.F. at home too complex to be controlled by one man. By the summer of 1936 the Air Council had swept away A.D.G.B. and the areas, and reorganised on a basis of specialised commands.
Four of these were formed, supported by a maintenance group: Bomber, Fighter, Coastal and Training commands, with headquarters at Uxbridge, Stanmore, Lee-on- Solent, and Tern Hill, Shropshire.
In 1937 the R.A.F. relinquished control of the Fleet Air Arm to the. Navy, and in 1938 formed three new commands, Maintenance, Balloon and Reserve. The first dealt with the supply of equipment and armament, the second with balloon squadrons and sites established round the most vulnerable areas, and the third with the administration of the volunteer reserve and the civil elementary flying training schools.
Under this decentralised system the Air Ministry was relieved of detailed administration by delegation to the commands. This simplified the management of the air force and ensured the development of each arm.
At command level the air officers commanding were able to devote themselves to the main task of stragetic planning and direction by delegating as much of the administration as possible to senior air staff officers and air officers in charge of administration. These were the principal subordinates in operational matters.
While the Cabinet therefore decided general strategic policy the Air Council was responsible for its execution through the Chief of the Air Staff. He issued directives for the guidance of commanders and preserved broad control over operational policy. It was then up to the air officer commanding the command to achieve results by using the forces at his disposal.
Each command was divided into a number of subordinate groups. Each group was commanded by an air vice-marshal or an air commodore and consisted of a number of stations or wings under a group captain or a wing commander administering one or more squadrons.
With the exception of some distinctive variations, such as the sector organisation in Fighter Command, the pattern was broadly the same throughout down to group levels. Below this there were marked differences: whereas a Group in Bomber Command might consist of six Blenheim and four Whitley squadrons operating from five airfields, a group in Maintenance Command might contain half a dozen units, each resembling a factory, concerned with overhauling aircraft and engines.
Fighter Command was formed on July 6th, 1936. Seven days later Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, its first air officer commanding-in-chief, paid a visit to Bentley Priory, near Stanmore, Middlesex. This 166-year-old mansion was formerly the headquarters of the Inland Area which moved to Tern Hill as Training Command. It became the Fighter Command headquarters and served as such throughout the Battle of Britain.
The command was divided into two groups. With headquarters at Uxbridge, No. 11 Group assumed operational and administrative control of the southern division. No. 12 Group controlled the northern territories from headquarters at Watnall, Nottinghamshire.
The resources of both groups were too thin, however, to enable them to cover the west and north, but this was resolved after war broke out by the formation of No. 13 Group north of York with headquarters at Newcastle upon Tyne and No. 10 Group west of Oxford based at Box, Wiltshire. Later No. 14 Group north of the Tay and No. 9 Group in the south-west of England completed the picture.
On the verge of war, during the Munich crisis of 1938. Here No. 79 squadron Hawker Furies formate in their new—and very hurriedly applied—camouflage. There had not been time to paint on R.A.F. roundels. In 1931 Fury was the R.A.F.’s first interceptor in Squadron service to exceed 200 m.p.h. Armament was two synchronised Vickers machine guns
The groups were subsequently divided into sectors surrounding selected fighter bases known as sector stations.
In the meantime Dowding worked out an ‘ideal air defence’ scheme at the request of Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, who in October 1936 had become captured by the piece-meal modifications to the defence programmes.
Dowding showed that broadly at least forty-five fighter squadrons, 1,264 heavy anti-aircraft guns and 4,700 searchlights would be required. Up to 300 twin-barrelled pom-poms seemed likely to be needed for defence against low-flying aircraft, over 400 balloons for the London barrage and an indeterminate number elsewhere. To cover the new defended areas more Observer Corps units would be necessary.
The number of fighter squadrons visualised was small, but it was considered adequate to meet a bomber offensive launched across the North Sea. The possibility that France would fall, bringing Britain within range of enemy fighters, could not have been further from anybody’s mind.
Time and energy were required to build Fighter Command into a unified defence mechanism. Time was short but Dowding was endowed with an abundance of energy which he used unsparingly to weld the growing numbers of men and, later, women, airfields, aircraft, radar, balloons, headquarters and communications into a flexible and effective organisation.
The war begins; blackout curtains go up, barrage balloons fly overhead and children are evacuated from London. Here, in September 1939, a group of London children arrive at a station in Surrey complete with labels and the inevitable cardboard gas mask cases
The organisation creaked through its first test, the summer defence exercises of 1937.
The first results were far from spectacular. The infant radar network and fighter control organisation, though promising, were still uncertain of themselves. None of the biplane fighters was able to intercept the new fast twin-engined Bristol Blenheim bombers without being in a position of advantage above them. Even if they chose precisely the right moment to roll over into a vertical diving attack, they were hard pressed to get the speed they needed to use their camera guns within range. The Blenheim formations drew away steadily until the fighters were obliged to give up the chase and return home.
By the summer of 1938 the picture began to change. Hurricanes of Nos. 56, 87 and 111 squadrons gave the controllers a taste of the reality they would be facing two years later.
Several important conclusions were reached after the 1938 exercises. British cities were not considered immune from attack but on the assumption that the Germans would maintain daily raids of 200 machines the defence could count on destroying one-tenth. The exercises also brought out the relative merits of the offensive and the defensive in air warfare and the advantages to the bomber pilot of bad or cloudy weather.
With war came the blackout and air raid precautions. Here an A.R.P. warden sets a black-out clock at an A.R.P. post near London in 1939
Towards the end of January 1937 Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Courtney, then an Air Vice-Marshal as Deputy Chief of the Air Staff and Director of Operations and Intelligence, visited Germany. The Luftwaffe conducted him on a tour of several units and factories, including the Heinkel works at Rostock. On February 2nd he had talks with General Milch.
Milch arrived in England nine months later, on October 18th, with Ernst Udet, the Director of the Technical Department at the Air Ministry, and General Stumpff. The shadow factories impressed him and he was complimentary about the spirit and organisation of the R.A.F. About the aircraft they saw, however, the Germans expressed grave doubts.
A month later the Government bestirred themselves on the question of anti-aircraft defence and Mr. Hore-Belisha, Minister of Defence, announced the formation of an anti-aircraft corps in June 1938.
By the time Anti-Aircraft Command was formed in April 1939 the Munich crisis of September 1938 had ensured that guns were coming off the production lines; they were, however, far too late to fill the gaps even by 1940. With the integration of A.A. Command with Fighter Command, the main components of the home defence were assembled. Their weapons were good but they needed many more.
The value of the Munich Agreement was that it gave the R.A.F. a year of grace. To oppose the German long-range striking force of 1,200 modern bombers in 1938 Fighter Command could muster, including all reserves, only 759 fighters and of these only ninety-three were Hurricanes. The rest were outdated biplanes. The Hurricanes, being without heating for their guns, could not fight above 15,000 feet, even in summer. No Spitfires were in service.
A year later the Martin-Baker Company produced a design for a utility interceptor, the M.B.2, which could be produced easily and was powered by a Napier Dagger engine. Despite the call for fighters Martin-Baker were not given a production order for reasons dating back to 1932. In that year Sir Frederick Handley Page (then Mr. F. Handley Page) threatened to stop making aircraft on the ground that he was not getting the official support he needed to keep his works going. Fearing that the rest of the aircraft industry might follow Handley Page’s example, the Government acted by guaranteeing existing companies all future contracts for first-line aircraft to ensure availability in the event of an emergency. This decision had the effect of creating a closed shop. Any newcomer to aircraft design was virtually precluded from receiving orders for fighting aircraft and had to be content with trainers and gliders.
When Poland was invaded on September 1st, 1939, full mobilisation was publicly proclaimed in the British Isles. But for the R.A.F. the proclamation merely confirmed the call-up notices served on the twenty Auxiliary Air Force squadrons now in Fighter Command, and the Volunteer Reserve on August 24th. By September 1st most of them were in uniform. The units at home and overseas moved to war stations. The air defence system was manned and the look-out began. Coastal Command patrols kept watch for German Naval raiders over the North Sea, and the Air Ministry prepared to requisition civilian aircraft and aerodromes.
During that week ten Fairey Battle light bomber squadrons of the Advanced Air Striking Force and four Hurricane squadrons allotted to the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force crossed to France. They suffered no interference from the Germans but the engine of one of the Battles failed and the plane came down on the sea. The crew was picked up and shipped to safety. The anticipated appearance of the Luftwaffe did not materialise and as time wore on the feeling of tension gave way to one of boredom.
It no longer seemed possible that Britain, bathing in the peaceful warmth of the sunlit summer, was at war.
The dispatch of eight reconnaissance squadrons of the Air Component by Mid-September brought the strength of the R.A.F. in France up to establishment. It remained thus, except for the addition of another two fighter squadrons by the end of 1939, until after the German invasion.