Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

~ ~~
BATTLE OF BRITAIN
TABLE 3-1
RAF Manpower
Total
Officers NCOs Pi,ots
Airmen
(Fitters &
Riggers)
Total
RAF
Personnel
Jul31, 1940
Jul I, 1940
Aug I, 1940
Sept I, 1940 6,729 10,964
Oct I, 1940 8,579 12,955
2,432
1,527
-
17,693 51,979
21,534 55,396
303,280
-
395,191
457,475
Note: See also Figure 3-4 on page 137.
Source: AIR 2011966.64819 Report to Cabinet Office, 1
and AIR 20/25.2937.
(4/41, and AIR 221312,70833, IR
‘218.RC294
The Germans had the advantage of being on the offensive: they could
choose the time and place of their actions. As noted in Samuel Stouffer’s
The American Soldier, under those circumstances fighter pilots reckoned
in 1944 that they could fly up to about twenty-eight hours in every seven
days without going over the threshold of combat fatigue. However, that
was later, in a period of great elan. In 1940 even the German pilots, with
their constant worry about fuel shortages and the likelihood of attack, were
under increased pressure. And RAF defensive fighter pilots felt an even
greater strain, in part because they lived in the midst of their own civilian
pop~lation.~~
They spent sixteen hours a day sitting at dispersal on their fields waiting
for the telephone to ring or the Tannoy (public address system) to blare.
They then had to run fully clothed to their aircraft, climb in, strap in, and
with adrenalin pumping, take off and climb at full throttle. On an average
they did this twice a day, which altogether totaled about one hundred
minutes. And when they were released, there was little if any properly
organized recreation. Their billets were on the station, which might be
bombed, and they had little time for sleep.
In a sense, the problems of the pilots were the problems of a service
that had never considered that it might be bombed on its home airfields. It
was not until May 30, 1941, that the decision was made to abandon the
peacetime plan for stations and to disperse living quarters. Until then, RAF
stations were compactly designed so that all the buildings were within comfortable
walking distance of one another. Even when the war started, the
153