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Aviation History
1940
1940 - 1267.PDF
Formation, Organisation and Work of the Maintenance Command WHEN the last war started, the Royal FlyingCorps (Military Wing) naturally indented forits stores on the Army Ordnance Department, but soon found that this was unsatisfactory. Air squad- rons need very rapid supply of new stores and of replace- ments, and the complicated procedure of an Army department proved too cumbrous. So, presently, the R.F.C. set up its own supply organisation, and formed a body of Equipment Officers who were trained (more or less) at a School of Aeronautics, first at Reading and afterwards at Henley. The Phyllis Court Club at Henley, associated in the thoughts of so many with the brilliance of the great annual regatta, was devoted to classes on the internal economy of Ford, Leyland and Crossley motor vehicles, not forgetting the P. and M. motor cycle. The new organisation was an improvement on the old, but even so the energies of the E.O.s were too much occupied with trying to remember whether a particular form should be made out in triplicate or in quintuplicate, and whither each copy should be despatched. To many old E.O.s the memories are painful though sometimes amusing. In the interval between the first and the second wars with Germany the Air Ministry began to take stock of the situation, and to consider how matters could be im- proved ; but it was not until 1938 that the present Main- tenance Command was brought into existence, with Air Vice-Marshal J. S. T. Bradley, O.B.E., as Air Officei Commanding. The Munich so-called " agreement" took Place in September of that year, so the time proved to be short in which things could be put on a satisfactory "asis before they were to be tested in war. Still, better ate than never, and wonders have been achieved in the time. The A.O.C. had a clean slate before him, and he de- cided to set to work on new lines. He realised that his Command had more in common with a commercial organisation than with a Government department tied to a fighting Service. So'the Command put its official pride in its pocket and asked advice from all sorts and kinds of commercial and industrial concerns. It consulted the heads of railways, petrol companies, the Automobile Association, and lots of others; it took advice on office systems and on methods of higher control. In the course of its enquiries it discovered the interesting fact that ii was to be a much bigger affair than most commercial firms. For instance, one large commercial combine stocks some 30,000 separately named articles, whereas the Maintenance Command now stocks about 300,000 separately named items, and issues, on an average, half a million articles a week. Its total stock of articles, great and small, runs into many millions. System of Qrouping In the result, the Command is organised as a head- quarters and four Groups. The Groups are named: (a) Equipment Group, (b) Aircraft Group, (c) Armament and Fuel Group, and (d) Repair and Salvage Group. The Command H.Q. draws up plans and leaves it to the Groups to carry them out. The Group Commanders work out the details, and all through the object is to cut out red tape and get down to real efficiency in keep- ing the operational units supplied with everything they want. The Equipment Group works through a number of Depots. There were Depots in the last war and since, but they used to work largely on the principle of special- ising on various classes of stores. The present Depots are on the Universal Holding basis, each one stocking a
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