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Sergeant pilots in Royal Flying Corps

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Wednesday, 6th April 2011

  There were a number of Sergeant pilots and observers in the RFC during the First War. Given the social class structure at the time, does anyone know whether they were permitted to join the other aircrew in the Mess? Was there a PIlots' & Observers' Mess to which all aircrew were allowed or were Sergeants relgated to their own Mess, along with non-flying NCOs, so that the Officers could keep clear of the riff-raff?

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  Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 6th April 2011

  I am told that during the Second World War, that although they used the senior NCOs mess, they were treated (More so at the begiining of the war) as unclean. That's really the wrong word. To NCOs that had joined the regular RAF and then worked their way up through the ranks to be Sergeants or above, to suddenly see the six week wonders, that is men that have joined the wartime RAF, did their basic training then having passed aircrew selection,then having become aircrew been given the rank of sergeant, did not go down to well with the old timers.

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  Posted by colonelblimp (U1705702) on Wednesday, 13th April 2011

  My father enlisted in the RAF on September 3rd 1939 and, by 1942, was a sergeant (though not aircrew). I remember him telling me how he'd encountered this very attitude from a regular, who sneered that it had taken him 15 years to reach the same rank and implied that my father couldn't be regarded as a PROPER sergeant. To which Dad replied that surely a serviceman's job was, ultimately, to fight wars and that, as he was considered good enough to hold the rank in wartime, he was certainly good enough to hold it in the peacetime air force.

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  Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Wednesday, 13th April 2011

  A similar view prevailed in the pre-war Royal Navy, where air branch officers (pilots & lookers) who wore an "A" within the Executive Curl of their rank stripes were regarded as "not real officers". Incidentally, until the FAA reverted to Admiralty control, they held dual commissions in the RAF as, irrespective of their naval rank, Pilot Officers.

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  Posted by rooster (U14062359) on Monday, 18th April 2011

  My father joined the RAF in 1938 at the age of 16 as a trainee. He gradually worked his way up and by 1941 was seeing action as a sergeant pilot.
  In late 1943 he was transfered to No.1 Air Armament School at RAF Mamby in Lincolnshire. By this time he had met and married my mother who was in the WRAF. He was killed in a mid-air collision while piloting a Bristol Blenheim 1V over the sea at Theddletorpe ranges Lincs. while I was in the womb.
  He had told my mother that he had met with some snobbery after his rise through the ranks, but this had been offset by the cameraderie they all shared in the sergeants mess.

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  Posted by RedGuzzi750 (U7604797) on Tuesday, 19th April 2011

  Totally unreliable of course, but I remember the star of the show "Wings" in the in 1970s (Sgt Farmer) having practically a Mess to himself as the only seargeant pilot - at the beginning. By the end as a survivor it was a rather different atmosphere......
  
  I remember a few memoirs of WW2 ("Reach For The Sky" and "Typhoon Pilot") where the CO had no problems appointing a Sgt to lead a flight, or even in some cases temporarily a Squadron because that particular pilot was the most experienced and simply the best for the job.

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  Posted by Triceratops (U3420301) on Sunday, 16th October 2011

  From what I can gather, NCO aircrew messed with ground crew NCOs and not with officer aircrew.
  
  The link below has another link to an interesting magazine article about NCO pilots
  
  
  [Adobe link]
  
  The Sergeant Eddington mentioned left the following about his time with No 6 Squadron [RE8s]
  
  "I couldn't make friends. I had nothing in common- I didn't have access to the officers' mess, I didn't know what they thought. In the Sergeants' mess they were all fitters and riggers- I wasn't in their world anymore than they were in mine.Dreadfully lonely"
  
  
  and also had to find out a bit more about the Holzminden escape.
  
  

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