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Aviation History
1941
1941 - 1536.PDF
, juiy xoui, i^4 O.T.U. Mk.i Blenheims in formation. AT A BOMBER O.T.U. By MAJOR F. A. de V. ROBERTSON, V.D. THE Operational Training Unit is an institution whichhas come into being since the outbreak of war, andthe man who conceived the idea must be quite a brilliant man. Before the war the Advanced Training Squadrons at the Service Flying Training Schools turned out pilots theoretically ready to take their places in opera- tional squadrons, and, in fact, they were very nearly fit to do so. They still, however, had to learn all the little ways of the particular type of machine with which their squadron was equipped. That did not take long, but in time of war an operational squadron cannot afford any time at all for polishing up the training of new members. Still less can a bomber squadron afford to give time to the combined training of crews—and the team work of air crews is now one of the strong points of R.A.F. effici- ency. So the Operational Training Units were started, and as a result a bomber squadron or reconnaissance squadron now gets a complete crew, thoroughly trained to work together as a unit. A visit to a bomber O.T.U. is therefore an extremely interesting thing, and recently such a visit was paid to one which trains for Blenheims. As most readers of Flight know, the crew of a Blenheim bomber consists of three men, pilot, observer (i.e., navigator and bomb-aimer), and wireless operator-air gunner. Each of these has to be brought up to scratch in his own job, each has to become familiar with working in his own special corner inside a Blenheim, and finally all three have to be trained to work together. There is a great deal in this working together. Every man has his own little ways, and his two partners have to get used to those little ways; they must, for ex- ample, grow used to the sound of his voice on the inter- communication set and to his pet ways of expressing him- self. A man with, say, a broad accent from Glasgow or Toronto might at first be almost unintelligible to men from Yorkshire or Somerset. A Post-Graduate Course The training at an O.T.U. might be described as a post- graduate course, for all the men arrive at the station quali- fied to wear their appropriate badges, either the pilot's wings, the single wing of the observer, or the badge of the air gunner. Each has proved his ability to do his own job, but each will benefit by a bit of extra polishing ; besides, a man must not be allowed to grow rusty after he has been trained, and that is why the long list of waiting men con- sists of those who have not yet been trained. Hence the impatience so frequently voiced by many who have volunteered and cannot understand why they are left kick- ing their heels before being called up. After training there must not be, and there will not be, any kicking of heels. Side by side with all these considerations there is the need to save petrol and to save wear and tear on aircraft. So much of this specialised training has to be done on the ground, and many are the ingenious devices which have been invented to simulate conditions of flight. For pilots there is, of course, the Link trainer, whichhas been often described and depicted in Flight. The gadgets for training the observers and air gunners are perhaps not so well known—in fact, some of them have been invented at this or some other O.T.U. and are gradually being standardised. The pilots may not have flown Blenheims at their S.F.T.S., and they are naturally taught to handle the machine at the O.T.U. This conversion course is a big and important step. The A.M.L. (Air Ministry Laboratory) teacher has also been described. This is for the benefit of the bomb-aimer. He sits beside his pilot in a dummy cockpit in a darkened room, and on the floor a film of a tract of country is projected. Actually it is about eight feet below the cockpit, but it shows the country as it would be seen from a height of 10,000 feet. The observer is told to bomb a certain target on it, and he directs the pilot, who moves the film accordingly until the observer is satis- fied and makes the signal which indicates that he has bombed. The Spotlight Trainer ' ' ' An important point on an operational flight is correct reporting by the gunner when he sees enemy aircraft. So each gunner is made to sit in the cockpit of a Blenheim in a darkened hangar while illuminated silhouettes of German aircraft appear suddenly at some spot on the walls. The gunner reports by telephone as he would do to his pilot, but the message comes to the instructor sitting at a table in the hangar. The silhouettes show red for port and green for starboard, and the gunners are taught to call out the colours when reporting. Naturally, individual gunners have their own ways of reporting. One will say in a calm, low voice, " Two Me 110s on our starboard beam " ; another will call excitedly, "A dickens of a lot of Jerries on my tail." These idiosyncrasies are discouraged, and a standard form of verbal reporting is being introduced. There is another practice for air gunners, in actual gun- nery, called the Spotlight trainer. If it were not for the expense of the apparatus, it would make a tremendously fascinating game for fairs on Hampstead Heath, and would undoubtedly drive Darts completely out of popularity. But the apparatus consists of a power-operated gun turret mounted in a darkened room with the gun pointing towards a concave apse in the wall, and this would cost a pretty penny. When the gunner presses the trigger a spotlight appears on the wall where his shot would have struck. An instructor stands below with a long torch, over the bulb of which is fitted a silhouette of a Me log or other enemy aircraft. He throws this figure on to the wall of the apse and moves it about, while the gunner follows it and snoots at it with his spotlight. The turret is not subject to bumps or evasive action, but none the less one gets a very good idea of the problems of air gunners, and feels greater admiration than ever for the way in which they have so often shot down the Messerschmitts which have attacked our bombers. Wireless operators spend useful hours (more or less) in- side a little box-like compartment known as the Harwell trainer. It is fitted up exactly like the wireless post inside a Blenheim, and the operator gets familiar with all the instruments he has to deal with, talking to the instructor
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