David Spruce, a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Wolverhampton, will shed light on the men who made up the RFC and help discern fact from fiction in exploring training within the RFC.

This free Trenchard lecture is supported by the Royal Aeronautical Society and is part of the RAF Museum's Research Lecture Programme.  You can find out more about the RAeS at http://www.aerosociety.com/

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When Britain went to war in 1914, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was just two years old. The military wing’s strength amounted to 146 officers and 1,097 other ranks. In a little under four and a half years, it would grow 140-fold to an organisation of over 291,000. Such staggering growth with associated organisational complexities would be a stiff challenge in todays interconnected world. Yet those who ran Britain’s flying services achieved such growth in a world of paper and filing cards.

Once recruited, men of all ranks required training. The RFC of 1914-1918 had to accomplish this herculean task in an environment of revolutionary technological and tactical change. Missions in Bristol F2Bs in 1918, for example, had little in common with those carried out in 1914 by Maurice Farman Longhorns.

Yet much of what has been written about the recruitment and training of the RFC is at the very least, questionable.  The historiography is dominated by the daring deeds of the so-called ‘aces’. This, despite the fact that only 8 per cent of the RAF men in France in November 1918 were ‘combatants’, that is, those who flew either as pilots, observers or gunners. Almost 60 per cent were mechanics, fitters, engineers, and other tradesmen who kept the aircraft flying. Of these men, little has been written. The historiography of RFC training is if anything even worse, a muddle of exaggeration, misstatement, and myth.

So, who really made up the RFC and how effective was the RFC’s training programme? This lecture will shed more light on the men who made up the RFC and help discern fact from fiction in exploring training within the RFC.

The Recruitment and Training of the Royal Flying Corps, 1912–1920