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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0893.PDF
28 June 1957 From Air Marshal Sir Douglas Macfadyen, K.C.B., C.B.E., Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, and Commandant, Air Training Corps 899 HOME COMMAND TTOME COMMAND is the name, given in 1950, to the Command formerlyAx known as Reserve Command. It is the only Command in the United King- dom organized on a geographical, as opposed to a functional, basis. The units for which it is responsible are distributed not only throughout all countries of the British Isles, but also in Europe and as far afield as Australia. Thus the title Home Command is somewhat of a misnomer. The R.A.F. Record Office and the R.A.F. Ctaff College, Bracknell, are also included within its administrative orbit. Prior to 1957, Home Command was organized into six Groups. Now it is reduced to two—Northern and Southern. A principal task of Home Command is to train and maintain the pre-Service units for which the Royal Air Force is responsible. These comprise the University Air Squadrons, the R.A.F. sections of School Combined Cadet Force contingents, and the Air Training Corps. Con- trol of the University Air Squadrons and R.A.F. sections of C.C.F.s is exercised through the two Home Command Groups. The Air Training Corps, of which the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Home Command, is Commandant, is con- trolled directly by Headquarters Home Command. A composite Cadet Branch has been specially established within the Headquarters for this purpose. The Air Training Corps, which comprises between 700 and 800 Squadrons, organized into some 50 Wings on a County basis, is sustained by voluntary effort. The cadets themselves are volunteers, the officers are members of the Volunteer Reserve (Training) Branch of the R.A.F., and each squadron is supported by a voluntary civilian committee. Closely allied to pre-Service training is recruiting, and Home Command is also responsible for the day-to-day implementation of Air Ministry recruiting policy and for looking after some 44 Recruiting Centres located throughout the U.K. Another major function of Home Command is the administration of many units which cannot conveniently be looked after by any other Command. They are a "mixed bag" and include—to mention but a few—Ministry of Supply units, R.A.F. hospitals, movements units and police units. To sum up, the main tasks of Home Command are pre-Service training, recruit- ing, and the administration of a wide diversity of units. In spite of its name, Home Command has a responsibility for units more widely distributed than those of any other Command in the Royal Air Force. In particular. Home Command is brought into daily touch with very many civilians who voluntarily devote a large proportion of their leisure time to Service duties. I would like to take this oppor- tunity of expressing admiration and appreciation of the splendid work done by these volunteers. AT Christmas Island, 8,600 miles from the United Kingdom,• No. 160 Wing, taking part in the British H-bomb tests, has looked to Home Command for the solution of its administrativeproblems. And even farther afield, at Edinburgh Field, near Adelaide, is an R.A.F. support unit (in Australia for guided-missiletrials) which is administered from the Command's heaquarters at White Waltham. Home Command indeed has a far wider orbitthan its purely domestic title would suggest. As the A.O.C-in-C. remarks above, Home Command's principalfunction lies in the pre-Service training of the Air Training Corps, the R.A.F. sections of the School Combined Cadet Force Con-tingents and the 17 University Air Squadrons, together with their technical and airfield construction flights. With the prospect ofthe R.A.F. becoming an all-regular force by 1962 there is a grow- ing importance attaching to the A.T.C., which supplies somethinglike 40 per cent of the intake of boy entrants and apprentices. To help in attracting as many as possible of the 33,000 A.T.C. cadetsand the 8,000 C.C.F. air cadets into the Regular Air Force the flying scholarship scheme is being retained, and 350 flying scholar-ships are being offered this year. In addition, about 1,200 cadets receive gliding instruction each year at the 21 A.T.C. glidingschools. Home Command has been reduced from six groups to two—No. 61 Group at Kenley and No. 64 at Rufforth, York—and these groups control the University Air Squadrons and the R.A.F. components of the C.C.F. The A.T.C. comes under thedirect control of Home Command headquarters. The administration of the R.A.F. hospitals is another importantresponsibility of Home Command. In order to simplify liaison with the regional hospital boards of the N.H.S. such services areprovided on a geographical basis—and thus it is a tidy arrange- ment for the R.A.F.'s ten hospitals, three medical rehabilitationunits and a number of other medical establishments to be adminis- tered by Home Command. On the flying side, to refute any suggestion that Home Command is purely an administrative organization, are the 89,000 hours entered in the Command's log-books last year. At H.Q. is the Examining Unit, equipped with a variety of aircraft—Devons,Chipmunks, Vampires, Balliols and others—which carries out staff officers' instrument ratings, and visits the C.A.A.C.U.s andthe civilian flying clubs co-operating in the flying scholarship scheme. There is the usual communication flight organization atWhite Waltham, and this is repeated, but on a slightly reduced basis, at the two group headquarters. Apart from major commitments such as administering theRecord Office at Innsworth and the R.A.F. Staff College at Brack- nell, Home Command also looks after an almost bewilderingdiversity of miscellaneous units. These range from Ministry of Supply, police and movements units to little-known but interestingformations such as the R.A.F. detachments at various NATO headquarters, the Command's international schools, the CentralWork Study Unit and the Joint Services Language Courses. Home Command certainly strives to live up to its motto of "Support." G.R.G. The Air Training Corps is administered by Home Command, and typical of its activities are (left) gliding tuition and (right) equipment repair instruction—in this case to a Rebecca test unit.
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