RAF Wartime Aircrew Training Aircraft

Before answering, one would have to figure out how many of those crash deaths were because of maintenance issues.

I would have thought weather and inexperience were far bigger killers.

Anyone have any real data?

I don’t think there’s any way of knowing. Aircraft were lost without trace or totally destroyed in accidents. The only to get a real inkiling would be to identify all aircraft lost in training and then order the loss card for each and see what each one has to say about cause.

regards,

kev35

raf flying traing unit aircraft

The point im making here is that these aircraft were badly maintained and therefore bound to failiure at some point,im wondering why these planes werent maintained properly given the important role they played, its worth noting that any pilot who considered his alloted aircraft too dangerous to fly was usually charged with LMF(lack of moral fibre)and either court martialed or given a prison sentance, cleary a case of” get on with it or else “which is one hell of an option bearing in mind it cost around£10,000 at that time to train a pilot for active duty, the wastage/loss of life through avoidable accidents due to poor maintainane must have been quite high , I have read numerous accounts of aircrew who survived these training units and were appalled by the state of the training aircrafts flight worthiness,was there any kind of enquiry after the war in respect of this, or was it a case of put up and shut up.

Assuming you’re correct, what do you suggest was the alternative? Put every effort into the maintenance of OTU aircraft to the detriment of those on front line Squadrons? Convert the 1,000 bomber raids into an effort with only 250 aircraft? Present an invading German Army with training aircraft in excellent condition while the front line aircraft were unable to take part in any effort to stop an invasion due to maintenance issues?

I’m not naive enough to think that there weren’t any issues with using tired aircraft in OTU’s, there must have been. But don’t you think you’re doing a disservice to those who struggled in all weathers to maintain those aircraft?

There’s never going to be anything other than anecdotal evidence to support your claim. Slome losses may have been due to maintenance but as J Boyle says, I would also expect inexperience and weather to be the larger causes of loss.

Regards,

kev35

Regarding an enquiry into accidents. In the early 50s there was a very high accident rate among trainees, especially jet pilots and the Meteor gained a very bad reputation, “phantom diver” etc. Winston Churchill was quoted somewhere of raising this in the house of commons. He got an answer along the lines of “A pilot has a 16 to 1 chance of being killed during his first 18 months on jets. This is considered acceptable”
Churchills answer was along the lines “That may be acceptable to the civil service, but it is not acceptable to me”. There was then a considerable drive to include safety training and awareness apparent in the early 50s. See Colin Cummings book “Last Take Off” which details almost 1200 deaths in RAF accidents in the 4 years 1950 to 1953.

Regarding an enquiry into accidents. In the early 50s there was a very high accident rate among trainees, especially jet pilots and the Meteor gained a very bad reputation, “phantom diver” etc. Winston Churchill was quoted somewhere of raising this in the house of commons. He got an answer along the lines of “A pilot has a 16 to 1 chance of being killed during his first 18 months on jets. This is considered acceptable”
Churchills answer was along the lines “That may be acceptable to the civil service, but it is not acceptable to me”. There was then a considerable drive to include safety training and awareness apparent in the early 50s. See Colin Cummings book “Last Take Off” which details almost 1200 deaths in RAF accidents in the 4 years 1950 to 1953.

It is shocking to see the large number of peacetime RAF Officer fatalities listed on the 1950’s wall at the National Arboretum monument nr Lichfield. Assume the vast majority were aircraft accidents? Korea excepted.

Regarding WW2 non combat losses, I would suspect a major factor was loss of control following inadvertant entry into IMC. Particularly lethal in the vicinity of high ground but potentially disasterous anywhere. It soon becomes hazardous very quickly and the stall/spin angle of attack can be soon encountered with recovery difficult without an external horizon.

Another dangerous zone would have been loss of power at or very shortly after take off. Again stall/spin can easily result normally following an ill advised attempt to turn back to the airfield.

Mid air collisions were not uncommon.

Regarding an enquiry into accidents. In the early 50s there was a very high accident rate among trainees, especially jet pilots and the Meteor gained a very bad reputation, “phantom diver” etc.
…
There was then a considerable drive to include safety training and awareness apparent in the early 50s.

That’s an important point, but I’d suggest that it’s crucial to distinguish between aircrew attitudes, training syllabus issues and expectations (including loss rates) and air force culture as a cause of accidents on the one hand – an unarguable issue in most air forces pre- 1950s at a guess, against, on the other hand, equipment (aircraft, engine, systems) failure in ‘normal’ use.

Regards,

Don’t forget they had beancounters in those days. Standards of maintenance I would say were very good. BUT the aircraft were very often tired second rate machines, some with poor flying characteristics, just waiting to turn round and bite the inexperienced, and often overconfident, eager young men flying them.
The same “Press on regardless” attitude pervaded the whole of the RAF, so flights would not be scrubbed for trivial reasons.

The point im making here is that these aircraft were badly maintained

Can you substantiate that view? With data?

im wondering why these planes werent maintained properly

Again, have you evidence to support that view? More critically, can you demonstrate the use of aircraft unfit to fly?

its worth noting that any pilot who considered his alloted aircraft too dangerous to fly was usually charged with LMF(lack of moral fibre)and either court martialed or given a prison sentance, cleary a case of” get on with it or else “

Again, that’s an interesting point. I think you are muddling pilots who claimed later unreproducible technical problems getting their willingness to ‘press on’ investigated with possible LMF outcome, subject to other (or more) investigations, as against pilots reporting aircraft for subsequently proven faults, who wouldn’t have ‘psychological’ or legal problems with their service.

I have read numerous accounts of aircrew who survived these training units and were appalled by the state of the training aircrafts flight worthiness,

‘Numerous accounts’? Which, please?

ALL W.W.II aircrew training had a significant loss rate, which today might seem appalling (in a sense, of course, it was) but that neglects to allow for the equation that a significant loss rate was inevitable in wartime conditions. The allies were able to do better than the axis powers by the use of Canada and the US for basic and often further training, avoiding European (and Pacific) weather conditions and enemy intervention until later in training. However crews had to deal with European weather sooner or later in their training – the HCU and OTU system brought them into their battle and weather environment as late as reasonably possible enabling appropriate operational efficiency.

I’m no expert, but while there will have been aircraft accidents where mechanical issues were a factor, the majority of accounts I’m aware of delineate issues to do with wartime skill levels and enumerate other factors causing accidents – from complex machinery getting away from under-experienced crews and collision with high ground.

There is also a significant difference between weary aircraft not needing to lift the full fuel and war load used for training and aircraft with structural or engine failures being used in training.

While, As JBoyle’s said, data by cause may be difficult to pin down (although if anyone has that it’d be interesting to see) it’s certain that on a wartime risk analysis, a lot of crews would kill themselves (or be killed by other circumstances) before their aircraft ‘failed’. Operational Research, pioneered in Bomber Command ran numbers on factors such as these, and some pragmatic decisions were based on those comparative evaluations.

While the almost universal orthodoxy of the ground crews’ ‘infallibility’ must be incorrect to some degree (while not disputing in any way their intent to do a safe job) I can’t see even second line groundcrew signing-off aircraft that were not safe to undertake the job.

Operational Research managed to increase serviceability in Coastal Command by changing the servicing methodology in a trial, which illustrates that there was not an acceptance of unserviceable aircraft in use and that efforts to improve aircraft availability rates were explored and implemented.

was there any kind of enquiry after the war in respect of this, or was it a case of put up and shut up.

In short, I don’t (yet) see any evidence supporting the need for such an enquiry. However I’d be interested if others have such information.

Regards,

PS: While masses of punctuation may not be critical, and definitely leaving my editor’s hat to one side, can I please introduce you to the full stop? Looks like this= . Separates the sentences for easier comprehension. 😉

Repcobrat
Since you first made your original post on this subject I have been looking for more detailed or breakdown figures, so far without any success.
It would be interesting to see for example the losses at initial training establishments and OTU’s. And how were training accidents at operational squadron counted, are these in the total?
I have known many wartime engineers over the years and have never heard any of them talk of different standards within RAF. What has been said though is that the pressure was on to produce serviceable aircraft, and this sometimes led to aircraft being released with defects that under normal circumstances would have been fixed.
The point I am making is that the pressures were there in all aspects of aircraft operation, lack of spares, ground time, hangar space, specialist tooling, technical support etc. The OTU’s may have just been worse in that they usually had the battle weary, hand me down fleet.

Richard

I saw many accident record cards during my research days at AHB. Weather issues played a big part in training losses. The cross countries were tricky and navigation skills had to be very good.
Equipment failures happened on Ops as well as training and I agree with an earlier comment that the groundcrew had a pride which would not lead them to signing off unfit aircraft for duty of any kind. Indeed the pressure was greater on an operational unit and continues into modern times.

IMHO there is little doubt that Bomber Command training units were ‘Cinderella Units’ that had to work with a wide range of mixed and ‘tired airframes’.

That said having spoken with many former ground and air crew they all undertook their duties with utmost professionalism (despite most being volunteers) and with immense respect and consideration for each other. I have particular connections with former personnel from 1661 HCU at RAF Winthorpe and the camaraderie I have experienced within that group of veterans is very humbling. To suggest the aircraft were badly maintained is inappropriate.

HCUs were an added level of training introduced by 5 Group to counter heavy loses, that were becoming difficult to sustain. HCU Courses were split into 2 sections – flying & ground training on alternate days and included a minimum of 6 hours bad weather flying – so when everyone else is on the ground on HCU you could be flying; not an ideal situation but a necessary one if you were to gain the skills need to cope with similar circumstances on Ops.

Toward the end of the war an additional level of training was added in 5 Group called Lancaster Finishing School.

Reinforcing the ‘bad weather issue’ the RAF Winthorpe / 1661 HCU Memorial features – “part of a propeller hub of an Mk III Short Stirling EF186, from 1661 Heavy Conversion Unit (HCU), which was then based at RAF Winthorpe. The aircraft crashed out of control at Breeder Hills near Grantham, Lincs, on December 4th 1944, after entering cumulus nimbus cloud while practicing recovery from unusual flight attitudes. The Stirling was carrying a crew of nine and there were no survivors.”

Rather than just making statements without backing them up I wondered whether there was any way we could try and establish some rough figures. I thought the easiest way was to take a sample of OTU losses from Chorley’s OTU volume. I decided to look at the period from 1st January to 31st March 1943. I chose this period because it covers this time of year when winter is normally at its worst and I chose 1943 because it was a period of great expansion and pressure for Bomber Command. There are bound to be errors in this as it is just a rough examination of the period, the results of which are posted below.

Throughout the period examined, Bomber Command OTU’s lost 141 aircraft with the breakdown as follows:

Wellington = 102
Whitley = 26
Blenheim – 11
Anson = 1
Lysander = 1.

From those aircraft, some 354 airmen were killed, 110 injured and 4 taken PoW.

Of the aircraft lost, I have tried to produce a rough breakdown by cause.

Lysander
Engine failure.

Anson
Overshoot.

Blenheim
6 x engine failure.
2 x weather.
1 x collision with high ground.
2 x unknown.

Whitley
13 x engine failure.
1 x weather.
1 x collision with high ground.
1 x overshoot.
1 x ground collision.
1 x take off accident.
1 x photoflash fire.
7 x unknown.

Wellington
27 x engine failure.
5 x weather.
6 x collision with high ground.
4 x overshoot.
5 x ground and mid air collisions.
11 x lost control.
6 x landing accidents.
2 x ground fires.
1 x ballon barrage cable.
4 x enemy action.
31 x unknown.

You can read into that what you will, however, it strikes me that a lot of the engine failures may have been handled better by more experienced crews.

However you interpret the above, one thing is absolutely certain. For a three month period the figures are shocking. Did maintenance or a lack thereof contribute to these appalling losses? It would take a lot of work to try and find the evidence to support that claim. To contrast this we could do with establishing how many sorties were carried out by Bomber Command OTU’s during the same period. That way a percentage of losses against sorties could be established. but someone else can have a go at that one.

Regards,

kev35

Can you substantiate that view? With data?

Again, have you evidence to support that view? More critically, can you demonstrate the use of aircraft unfit to fly?

Again, that’s an interesting point. I think you are muddling pilots who claimed later unreproducible technical problems getting their willingness to ‘press on’ investigated with possible LMF outcome, subject to other (or more) investigations, as against pilots reporting aircraft for subsequently proven faults, who wouldn’t have ‘psychological’ or legal problems with their service.

‘Numerous accounts’? Which, please?

ALL W.W.II aircrew training had a significant loss rate, which today might seem appalling (in a sense, of course, it was) but that neglects to allow for the equation that a significant loss rate was inevitable in wartime conditions. The allies were able to do better than the axis powers by the use of Canada and the US for basic and often further training, avoiding European (and Pacific) weather conditions and enemy intervention until later in training. However crews had to deal with European weather sooner or later in their training – the HCU and OTU system brought them into their battle and weather environment as late as reasonably possible enabling appropriate operational efficiency.

I’m no expert, but while there will have been aircraft accidents where mechanical issues were a factor, the majority of accounts I’m aware of delineate issues to do with wartime skill levels and enumerate other factors causing accidents – from complex machinery getting away from under-experienced crews and collision with high ground.

There is also a significant difference between weary aircraft not needing to lift the full fuel and war load used for training and aircraft with structural or engine failures being used in training.

While, As JBoyle’s said, data by cause may be difficult to pin down (although if anyone has that it’d be interesting to see) it’s certain that on a wartime risk analysis, a lot of crews would kill themselves (or be killed by other circumstances) before their aircraft ‘failed’. Operational Research, pioneered in Bomber Command ran numbers on factors such as these, and some pragmatic decisions were based on those comparative evaluations.

While the almost universal orthodoxy of the ground crews’ ‘infallibility’ must be incorrect to some degree (while not disputing in any way their intent to do a safe job) I can’t see even second line groundcrew signing-off aircraft that were not safe to undertake the job.

Operational Research managed to increase serviceability in Coastal Command by changing the servicing methodology in a trial, which illustrates that there was not an acceptance of unserviceable aircraft in use and that efforts to improve aircraft availability rates were explored and implemented.

In short, I don’t (yet) see any evidence supporting the need for such an enquiry. However I’d be interested if others have such information.

Regards,

PS: While masses of punctuation may not be critical, and definitely leaving my editor’s hat to one side, can I please introduce you to the full stop? Looks like this= . Separates the sentences for easier comprehension. 😉

thankyou for your input ,lets have lunch

…it strikes me that a lot of the engine failures may have been handled better by more experienced crews.

Interesting figures.

Possibly, many of these engine failures may not have been ‘engine failures’ at all, things like carburettor icing were surely more of a problem during the winter months. It would be interesting to compare ‘engine-failures’ during three months of summer.

Also it has to be said that the engines of an aircraft are in a class-of-their-own when it comes to complexity compared to other flight-critical parts of the aircraft.

Creaking Door.

You are right, I think I saw carburettor icing mentioned but no more than two or three times so it would make a difference to the overall figures. Also, there’s no way of knowing what happened to the ‘unknowns.’

Regards,

kev35

This enquiry has produced some interesting feed back which i am most grateful for ,some time ago whilst doing research i spoke to many ex aircrew and all of them referred to the condition of many of the training aircraft they used, all were of the same opinion being , lack of maintainance due to pressure of training schedules etc, end of.

I think I saw carburettor icing mentioned but no more than two or three times…

‘Engine-failure’ is an interesting cover-all phrase and I’ve no doubt that, as you suggest, engine-mishandling by the crew was responsible for a fair proportion of these ‘failures’. I don’t suppose the crew had much chance (or inclination) to try to analyse the failure if their aircraft started to lose height, in bad weather, over a blacked-out Britain.

An engine loses power, the RPM starts to drop, it overheats or the oil-pressure drops, obviously it is ‘engine failure’, nothing to be done so bale-out or crash-land. Interestingly all the aircraft that you posted figures for are single or twin-engined, and I’ve read that the Whitley couldn’t maintain height on one engine.

Also these statistics are probably made up from what the pilots or other survivors reported; people who may not have known what the problem was or who had an interest in not being found responsible. 😉

…I spoke to many ex aircrew and all of them referred to the condition of many of the training aircraft they used, all were of the same opinion…

I think it was a universal opinion of aircrew (especially tour-expired) returning to an OTU that the aircraft were ‘tired’ and the aircraft would also have been of a earlier mark, or an earlier design, to the ‘factory-fresh’ front-line aircraft they were used to.

Irrespective of any other factor, older, more used, lower powered aircraft will have an overall lower serviceability that newer aircraft; it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have been poorly maintained but that is a possibility too.

Kev35, that is a very interesting set of statistics and points the finger at the most complicated part, the engine. At a guess the Blenheim and the Whitley could not be flown successfully on one, does anyone know? The Wellington also I would suggest was marginal. I recall that loosing an engine in a Brigand resulted in an extremely relieved crew when we landed shortly afterwards.
As another aside, that brings to mind an incident in a Meteor with a very experienced pilot. He demonstrated to me a single engined overshoot, allowed the speed to decay perhaps 3 knots too low. We lost directional control and also had not the power to gain a lot of height. I clearly remember having a very close up and personal view of a hangar roof. Not an experience to be recommended.

And Bravo 333, in the early 50s I would hazard that there were more NCO than officer aircrew.