When they first got their hands on the controls novices learned that simple aircraft were delicate creatures and the sensations of handling were both disturbing and thrilling. Edward Hearn, a trainee estate manager from Folkestone, ‘was surprised to find the joystick extremely sensitive and even slight pressure had an effect on the machine’.40 He felt he was ‘handling something so delicate that even a slight touch would send us tumbling earthwards’. Repetition brought familiarity and then confidence until the day came to go solo, a great, never-to-be-forgotten moment in every pilot’s life.
Hearn was a slow learner. The average time taken by pupils to go solo was ten hours. In his case, it was fourteen. Decades later he could still ‘distinctly remember this first venture alone in the air … strapped in, propeller swung, goggles down, I opened up the throttle and it was the feeling of power as speed was gathered over the grass that gave me assurance and stability’. Hearn made three careful left-hand circuits without mishap. This was the easy part. Getting down was the problem. The training school canteens buzzed with stories of pupils who had come in to land fourteen or fifteen times before summoning the courage to put the aircraft down. Some finally had the decision made for them when they ran out of fuel. A rough landing did not qualify for ‘that would mean a bounce and if the bounce was a real banger that would have meant opening up the throttle and going around again’. Hearn eventually brought the machine in smoothly, cutting the engine a few feet from the ground and drifting in to roll smoothly over to his relieved instructor.
The plan was to recruit 800 potential pilots a year but it soon became clear that the quota would easily be filled. The supply of pilot recruits, particularly in the London area, much exceeded the demand.41 The problem was that everyone wanted to be a pilot. Few were interested in the less glamorous roles of observer – the contemporary term for navigators – and wireless operator/air gunner. The difficulty was solved when surplus pilots were diverted to fill the gaps in aircrew needs. By the time the war began there were 6,646 pilots in the ranks of the RAFVR; 1,623 had been trained as observers and 1,948 as wireless operators/air gunners.
The function of the RAFVR as a reserve did not last long. When the war started it became an administrative designation and the principal route for aircrew entry into the RAF. All those who applied for aircrew duties on their own initiative or chose the RAF when registering as required by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act which came into force in September 1939 joined its ranks. They were identified by a brass and cloth ‘VR’ worn on tunic lapels and shoulders. In 1943 the badges were phased out as they were considered divisive, though the surviving Auxiliaries were allowed to keep their distinguishing ‘A’.
The airmen who went into battle with the Luftwaffe were a compound of professionals and amateurs and represented a broad social and geographical swathe of Britain. The fusion was remarkably successful. In the judgement of the internal narrative, borne out by and large by the testimony of the participants, ‘so complete was the amalgamation that the distinctions of peacetime between the component parts ceased to be discernible and the memory of them failed to have any significance’.42
Those leading the force in the rush to war had managed to create a solid identity for a hugely expanded organization that would only get bigger with time. It was shared not only by the fliers but by the much larger number of men and women who kept them in the air.
5
‘There’s Something in the Air’
When the war broke out there was no repetition among the civilian population of Britain of the ‘tragic enthusiasm’ of August 1914. Most of those of fighting age fell in reluctantly, but quietly, with the demands that a succession of government decrees made of them, starting with the April 1939 Military Training Act. They accepted the need to serve, not because they wanted to, but because Hitler had given them no choice.
Full-scale conscription began on the first day of hostilities with the passing of the first National Service (Armed Services) Act and all males (with significant exemptions) between the ages of eighteen and forty-one were liable to call-up. The upper age limit for men was later increased to fifty-one, and from December 1941 single women and childless widows between the ages of twenty and thirty were required to report for war service.
On call-up, men had first to register, usually at their local Labour Exchange. There, they were asked to make a profoundly important choice. Which branch of the armed services would they prefer to spend their war in? Thus was created a popularity contest between the Army, Navy and Air Force. Initially, the RAF won it hands down. Of the 230,000 men aged twenty to twenty-two registering for the first conscription proclamation of 21 October 1939, nearly 30 per cent said they wanted to join the Air Force. The Navy was second with 17 per cent.1 The rest appear to have taken the fatalistic decision to go where they were sent. In February 1941, when the conscription net was thrown wider to scoop up nineteen-year-olds, nearly 50 per cent opted for the RAF against 18 per cent for the Navy.2
Many decided not to wait to be summoned but reported to one of the Combined Recruiting Centres dotted around the country to volunteer for the Air Force. Indeed, enlistments by those outside the conscript age range outnumbered pressed men until well into 1940.
RAF recruiting staff could therefore afford to be choosy as they surveyed each new crop of sprogs. In the first five years of the war, of those who volunteered before waiting to be called up about one in six were rejected. Among those who waited to be summoned before plumping for the Air Force, the washout rate was brutal. Less than half of those interviewed by recruiting officers made the grade (463,773 out of 1,054,348), and many of them were shunted off to the Army.3
In the first sixteen months of the war, 203,239 volunteers were accepted into the RAF, together with another 140,462 who opted for the Air Force on being called up.4 Having succeeded in joining their preferred service, each man had another crucial – and potentially fatal – choice to make. At an early stage they were asked whether they wanted to serve in the air or on the ground. Of the 343,701 who entered in that initial period only about one in ten – 35,267 – were assigned to aircrew duties.5 Among younger men, a figure of 13 per cent of aircrew optants was normal until recruiting tailed off in 1944.6
Why was it that so many ended up earthbound? It was not a simple question of choice. One reason was that far more technical tradesmen were needed than aviators, and anyone with a relevant skill would be steered towards a ground job. Another major factor was the high standard of physical fitness and intelligence set for those who volunteered for flying duties. Flying required a higher degree of academic ability than most military activity and, initially, priority was given to those with more than the legal minimal level of secondary education.
In 1939 four out of five children left school at fourteen when free education more or less ceased.7 The result was that the great majority of the first-wave applicants were automatically excluded from a flying career. Gloucestershire boy F. S. Reed had enjoyed a ten-shilling joy ride at the RAF aerodrome at South Cerney and was ‘hooked on flying’. When the war came he decided to join the Air Force but ‘having no academic qualifications I didn’t have a hope of being accepted for pilot training’.