From Civilian to Aircrew: The RAF's Wartime Training Machine

A young man joins a queue outside Lord's Cricket Ground in London, certain he will be flying an aeroplane within weeks. He has no idea that months of tests, classrooms and troopships across the Atlantic stand between him and a cockpit, or that the RAF has already begun deciding whether he will ever sit in one at all.

This episode matters because the RAF's ability to keep its squadrons crewed depended on turning that uncertainty into a system: an empire-wide production line stretching from Yorkshire to the Canadian prairies, sorting hundreds of thousands of ordinary young men into pilots, navigators, wireless operators, bomb aimers and gunners at a pace that could keep up with the aircraft coming off British production lines.

In this episode:

• How recruits at Lord's Cricket Ground were sorted into aircrew trades through aptitude tests and selection boards
• Why Britain alone couldn't safely train enough aircrew, and how the Empire Air Training Scheme solved that problem
• What elementary and advanced flying training actually involved, including the moment of a trainee's first solo flight
• The separate training paths for navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, air gunners and flight engineers
• The real cost of the training system, including the thousands of men killed away from combat
• How strangers from separate trade schools were crewed together at Operational Training Units before reaching a squadron

Listen if you're interested in:

• RAF selection and training in the Second World War
• The Empire Air Training Scheme and British Commonwealth Air Training Plan
• Bomber Command aircrew and how bomber crews were formed
• The human cost of wartime flying training

Explore more from The RAF Chronicle: For more stories on the people and systems behind the RAF's war, visit therafchronicle.co.uk.

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