RAF wartime circuit patterns

From AP3024, Flying Control in the Royal Air Force (reprint Aug ’44), Section 7, Regulations for the Local Control of Aircraft:-

Para 23. GENERAL REGULATIONS

(III) When flying in the vicinity of an airfield and/or awaiting permission to land, aircraft are to fly on left-hand circuits unless special local regulations are in force. Reference is to be made to the appropriate Confidential Document for such regulations.

I’m sure I’ve read about such local regs in Bomber country where circuits must have overlapped due to the proximity of ‘dromes.

There are also instructions about the “patter” to be used between individual aircraft and control which follows the advice quoted above but using 500 ft. seperation, which seems to make sense if you consider an airfield with 40 returning bombers!

You then add in all the accents from different nationalities ,flying characteristics of each aircraft ,pilot ,damage, weight,fatigue and weather and it all becomes rather incredible.

Which was deemed the most dangerous ,the multiple take offs and some form ups or the landings i wonder.

I have just looked in a couple of my autobio books to see if I could glean some info….
In the wonderful Murray Peden book A Thousand shall Fall on P216 onwards – Murray describes a night flight whilst at Chipping Warden (Wellington OTU) in 1943 – returning from a practice bombing run at Shotteswell range.
They then returned to Chipping Warden (or at least that was the plan :)) and the I/C and R/T conversation gives a flavour of the times.

In a few mins we came sailing up to the Drem system (lights)

Pilot ”Whats our Pundit flashing Sam?”
Nav ”Oh Hell skipper I forgot to bring the pundit list”
Pilot ”Well this ones flashing D-R – does that ring a bell ?”
Nav ”It must be our drome skip”

Pilot ”Hello Azure this is Benchhook J Jig.what is my turn to pancake?”

ATC ”Benchhook J Jig,this is Azure – you are turn one – Pancake” (the voice of their familiar tower WAAF)

Pilot ”Roger Azure J Jig pancaking”

They had actually landed at Gaydon who’s outer Drem system was 2.5 mins flying time from C Warden,landing at the wrong airfield was not unusual – especially at night and within VHF range of ones own Control Tower !

rgds baz

I doubt there was any widespread ‘standardisation’ at that time and I believe that different Groups/Commands would have their own procedures,and as already posted there were always variations due to close proximity of many airfields.

“The Dark Haven” by F. T. K. Bullmore is a very good book on this topic

This is a little info from pprune a few years ago,although the vertical separation (I think) would have been 500 ft

About fifteen miles from home, each would call its own control tower using the tower’s radio call-sign – a strange assortment of call-signs, all of them distinctive to avoid confusion with others: Eggwhisk, Hotpipe, Porkchop, Dopey, Fusspot, Bluefrock and so on.
As soon as these calls were made, RAF flying control would take over. Although the flying control officer directed the operation, a girl would use the microphone – a distinctive voice among the many male voices calling for instructions.
The first aircraft to call would normally be given first to land; the succeeding aircraft would then be ‘stacked’ one above the other at one thousand foot intervals (more likely 500 feet intervals? bazv) . All would circle the aerodrome awaiting turns to land.
Let us take as an example the well-known RAF aerodrome of Manston. The first returning bomber to call Manston control might be B for Baker. The exchange of requests and instructions would run as follows:
‘Hello Bluefrock, this is Baker. Over.’
‘Hello Baker, this is Bluefrock. Clear to land runway 18, QFE1002. Over.’
‘Hello Bluefrock, this is Baker. Wilco. Out.’
Baker’s reply of ‘wilco’ simply meant ‘will comply’.
Below them the crew of -Baker would see a widespread circle of lights surrounding not only the arodrome but extending over a mile from the landing area. In the blacked-out conditions of wartime England this ‘outer circle’ would show up clearly on all but the worst nights. The pilot would follow this circle round at a thousand feet until he reached the downwind side of the aerodrome. There he would call, ‘Downwind’, to which the tower would reply, ‘Pancake’, signifying ‘Clear to land’. The pilot would begin descending then from a thousand feet and turn to face the runway in use, guided by a ‘funnel’ of lights leading to the flarepath itself. Lastly he would watch for a green light from the airfield controller, who was positioned in a van beside the runway and had an uninterrupted view of runway activity.
In the meantime the second aircraft to call would have been given No. 2 to land, the third No. 3, and so on. These numbers not only gave pilots their tun to land, but also the altitude in thousands of feet at which they were required to circle – No 2 at 2000 feet, No 3 at 3000 feet. As Baker left 1000 feet, No 2 would be instructed to commence his approach, and No 3 woud be stepped down to 2000 feet and become No 2.
Once an aircraft had landed, a system of taxiway lights at ground level guided it to its parking place.

This differs slighly from what I understand with the Drem lighting system which is what Charlwood was describing. The last call would be ” Funnels” and I understand this is where our final call evolved from-any comments anyone?

Each bomber Group had a variation on this system, and I believe it was standardised across the entire Command in early 1944 or thereabouts. I do have a record of a 467 Squadron crew whose pilot received instruction in the “5 Group Quick Landing Scheme” in January of that year. This differed from the system that Charlwood explains by the addition of a second radio frequency – aircrft were organised in the stack on one freq and then transfered to the second one once actually in the circuit. With up to 40 bombers all arriving over the airfield at once this was to reduce frequency congestion. It was quite efficient, with an aircraft landing every minute or so. I’ve seen one particular night where three bombers landed inside the same minute, a remarkable effort!

So the simple answer to your question is: flares and lights only on the way out, and radios for the return. Clearly radio silence was no longer reuired once the target had been hit!

I don’t know if this is any help, as this relates to USAAF operations, but I have documents relating to the 401st BG at Deenthorpe which show left hand approaches being flown. However, the tower log states that this was sometimes changed if, for example, operations at nearby Spanhoe caused an overlap.

Best regards;
Steve

These days circuit patterns are mostly dictated by noise abatement considerations.

I would guess* that if circuits were flown then a standard left-hand circuit would be used (remember the pilot on anything bigger than a single-seater sits on the left), other than where two airfield were in proximity where local procedures might be in place to keep the traffic separated.

Just to clarify. An overhead join would be 2,000ft, descending deadside to the circuit height of 1,000.

QFE by morse over the W/T?

Moggy

*It really is just assumption, I can’t claim to know.