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