The behind the scenes work that goes on to put aircraft into the air and see that they are maintained there
INSIDE A REPAIR WORKSHOP. All over Britain, the Middle East and elsewhere the R.A.F. has its own emergency repair workshops, staffed by highly skilled mechanics and fitters. In one of these workshops, pictured above, British fighter aircraft undergo lightning repairs and overhaul for new operations.
“GIVE us the tools and we will finish I the job” said Mr. Winston Churchill, broadcasting in February, 1941. The same remark could be made by the various Commands of the R.A.F. and the men and women working in them. Without the aircraft, the crews are useless and the organization of the various headquarters so much waste effort. And, behind the aircraft, a vast system of “supply-on-demand” of spare parts is needed, airfields have to be constructed and maintained and protected, and an enormous personnel built up and trained to see that the operational units are always at the peak of efficiency.
It is not possible in the space available, to deal exhaustively with this subject. But no work on the Royal Air Force is complete without some indication of the behind-the-scenes work that goes on to put aircraft into the air and see that they are maintained there. It is the little thing, the often unconsidered trifle, that matters. The story of the clockmaker who was called to the army in his registration group and then had to be sent back to civilian life some weeks later because there was nobody left to repair the alarm clocks on which workers relied to get to their factory on time in the morning may not be exactly true, but it is typical. Without him, production in the factory fell through lost hours. The fall in production meant a shortage of a metal needed in aeroplane construction. That meant, in the end, fewer aeroplanes and so it went on. When the first assault forces landed on a beach near Algiers at dawn when the North African campaign began, two R.A.F. Servicing Commando Units went with them. They helped to capture Maison Blanche airfield just in time to attend to the first Hurricane that landed there. Within three minutes of that British fighter touching down it had been re-armed and re-fuelled and was taking off again — to fight again.
Maintenance Command of the R.A.F. has a raven as its badge, since it is the ravens who “provide”, and it lives up to the full meaning of that one word. It has a standing list of three-quarters of a million items always in stock and it is its proud boast that no aircraft is ever kept on the ground for want of a bolt or a screw or a nut or a spare part, even if that spare part is only in stock four hundred miles away. It will be delivered speedily, by air if necessary, or a motor cyclist dispatch rider will travel all through the night with it so that it is ready to be fitted with the coming of dawn.
A DISUSED MINE USED AS A BOMB STORE. In the galleries of a disused coal mine in Britain, hundreds of feet below ground, are stored vast numbers of various types of bombs which are being used by the R.A.F. against the enemy. Here is a store of thousand pound bombs such as are carried by heavy night bombers into the heart of Germany.
Manufacture of aircraft is, of course, in the hands of the Ministry of Aircraft Production, but when the machine leaves the factory it is taken over by the Maintenance Command for storage, final equipment and delivery, whether it comes to them from an underground British factory or at the hands of Ferry Command from America.
But the Command is not only responsible for aircraft. It exists to supply every material requirement, with the exception of food, stationery and building materials, of the R.A.F. Its three-quarters of a million items, listed in the catalogue which the Command calls its “Vocabulary” include the smallest screw, a four bladed propellor, the pilot’s high altitude flying equipment and the W.A.A.F.’s stockings. Everything is carefully indexed so that a brief signal may describe it and a day to day stocktaking system keeps track of the totals. Whenever a problem in accounting or stock-keeping has arisen, the Command has called on the best business experience available for help. The chief of a famous “football pool” was called in to advise on the rapid handling of vouchers. The head of a fixed-price chain store gave his advice on how to deal with a multitude of small items, and a firm of haulage contractors gave of their experience in dealing with questions of delivery.
Some of the problems which the Command has to face involve improvements to aircraft which are decided on after they have left the factory. These improvements have to be fitted while the machines are in store. Or it may be that some gadget is so secret that its installation in an
aircraft cannot be left to the factory where chance contacts may betray its purpose and basic idea. Then the Command collects the various parts of the gadgets made in widely dispersed parts of the country and fits them together itself.
To pack a fighter squadron for service overseas involves the collection together of more than 8,000 separate items, counting an aircraft engine as one and such spare parts of it as magneto, carburetter as complete items. Actually, if every nut and screw is counted there are 11,000 separate parts to a Rolls Royce engine alone.
A single order from a bomber station may cover an immense range of requirements. They will be packed into a huge lorry and sent on their way. The country is actually divided into seven delivery areas by the Command and even the most remote operational stations are visited by the delivery van at least once in every 48 hours.
The handling of explosives is a highly specialised task. In addition to the storage and delivery of bombs, this section of the Command deals with ammunition, pyrotechnics for signalling, oxygen and petrol. The main stores in which the explosives are kept are sometimes hundreds of feet deep in the side of hills.
AT WORK ON A LOCKHEED VENTURA. Repairs to high-powered aircraft engines call for a great deal of technical skill and patience. This ground crew is servicing a Ventura reconnaissance bomber of the Coastal Command.
The salvage of crashed aircraft also comes under the control of the Command, though only about ten per cent, of the actual repairs are done by the Command’s own men. The depots where they work are, however, wonderful training grounds for aircraftsmen and, as soon as mechanics reach a high standard of skill, they are sent to stations to work on the maintenance of aircraft in operational use. The large repair depots and salvage and repair units are so organized that a minor crash or damage from anti-aircraft fire can be put right in record time. A Wellington bomber seen on a station in the early evening ready to take off on a night operational flight in a brand new coat of paint may not necessarily be new and straight from the store into which it was put when delivered by the aircraft factory. Actually it was probably over Bremen or some other German city the night before and came back with a large hole in the fuselage where it had been hit by “flak”. It was a pitiful sight when it came back, but the repair gang, men and women, got to work on it and finished in time to spray it with a new coat of paint and have it ready for another raid.
Ferry Command
Obviously the thing that the operational pilot needs most is a complete aircraft. It is also the one form of munition of war which can deliver itself so to speak, over great distances without the use of shipping space or lorries or rail wagons. It can be flown and carry freight or passengers in the process as well.
When war began, Britain was short of operational pilots. She needed everyone she could lay hands on and had none to spare for the routine jobs of delivering aircraft by air from factory to the Maintenance Command depots and from there in due course to the operational squadrons to replace those shot down or damaged in combat. To cope with this problem, the A.T.A. (Air Transport Auxiliary) was formed of civil pilots either too old or unsuitable for some other reason to take part in the fierce stress of the war. Famous people such as Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison joined. They did and still do a highly valuable job. Their organization grew. It showed what could be done by the air delivery of aircraft and suddenly, because of their work, the germ of an idea that was eventually to be one of the greatest triumphs of organization the war was to see, took shape. The idea of the air delivery of aircraft across the Atlantic to Britain, to every theatre of war in every part of the world, had birth. Ferry Command came into existence.
The war was only a few months old when the first steps for a regular Canada-Britain air mail service which would eventually become the basis of a bomber ferry service were taken. A group of experienced pilots, all men well-known on the world’s air routes, were sent to Canada and reinforced there with civilian pilots from Canada and the United States and service pilots from Coastal Command. A transatlantic ferry pilots’ school was opened in November, 1940, and on Armistice Day that year the first transatlantic delivery of American built bombers to Britain took place. Seven Lockheed Hudsons took off from Newfoundland under Captain D. C. T. Bennett, D.S.O., and ten hours later landed in Britain. Their flight went so smoothly that instructions were sent for the remainder of a consignment of fifty to take off.
In March, 1941, the following year, the bomber ferry came under the control of the Ministry of Aircraft Production but remained so for only a few months. In June, 1941, Mr. Roosevelt made it known to Mr. Churchill that the United States government was prepared to let U.S. army pilots and crews ferry bombers to Canada and Newfoundland and permit U.S. civilian pilots to fly them across the Atlantic. Later the Air Ministry again took over the ferry service and Ferry Command —now called Transport Command — was formed. Today the Command delivers a steady stream of aircraft across the Atlantic by three main routes, from Newfoundland, from Bermuda and from Brazil to the West Coast of Africa, the route for the Middle East.
The present headquarters of the Command are at the Dorval airport, Montreal, described by Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick W. Bowhill, G.B.E., K.C.B., head of the Command as “this splendid airport — one of the best I have known, with uninterrupted approaches, modem layout and extensive approaches”. It was completed sufficiently for partial use within five months of work on it beginning. The forward base at Newfoundland from which the aircraft take off for Britain, is another feat of engineering construction. Built on the site of an old forest camp alongside a railway, it is inaccessible by road but it has the widest aeroplane runways in the world. It is under snow for more than six months every year, but giant rotary blowers keep it constantly clear by spraying the snow into banks which sometimes are twenty feet high. Bermuda, which also had to have a good deal of construction work carried out, is used for the dispatch of flying boats. The Command also delivers aircraft across the Pacific to Australia, and sends to India and the terminal airport which is now the lifeline to China.
Regular Transport Command crews are mostly civilians from all over the world. But the greater number of pilots who bring new aircraft across are products of schools of the great Commonwealth Air Training Plan. When they pass out a special course is set them by Transport Command.
ATLANTIC FERRY CONTROL. At the eastern terminal of Ferry Command somewhere in Britain the control room staff plot the movements of every new plane in its 2,000-mile flight across the Atlantic from Newfoundland.
