RFC Claiming Rules

Al made reference in another thread to RFC claiming rules. Can those rules be found on the web? Other sources? Thanks!

DD

[Graeme]

There were no rules as such and until Combat Reports were introduced on 20 April 1915 the terminology used was open to interpretation.

From April 1915 on, a Combat Report was prepared at squadron level for each pilot involved in an engagement and these were sent to the Wing Headquarters to which each squadron was attached. The Wing Commander allowed or disallowed each 'claim' made in these reports, but then passed them on up to Brigade Headquarters. By 1918 Wing Commanders took considerable care to eliminate duplications of claims and to cut them down on the number of ‘out of control’ submissions.

Brigades followed this procedure and it was possible to have a claim disallowed by a Wing, only to be allowed by Brigade, or for a claim disallowed by both to appear in the Communiqué. The main weakness of the system lay in the lack of any centralized review process, which meant that two or more patrols from different units involved in the same fight, would each tend to claim all the German aircraft seen going down.

It is this lack of any centralised review body that led to the imprecise recording of victory claims. The only way to sort out what went on in any given engagement would be to analyse each side's version of events - naturally this would require everybody's records to be available

Graeme

Graeme: As usual, thanks for the thoughtful reply. It clarifies how the rules were applied from squadron through brigade, but I am trying to get to is not only a spelling out of the rules for, let us say, out of control or driven down, but when (you mention April 1915) and by whom the system was initiated. Was there a committee in London that established the system? I keep seeing intriguing lists of documents at universities in the UK and US, but accessing information that could shed some light on this seems to be very difficult in terms of geography and cost. Thanks for any help out there!

DD

RFC Claiming Rules?? An oxymoron. As Graeme said, "There were no rules".

Gee, Mike, thanks. There is a section on this site that deals with claims. It mentions that combat reports starting in April 1917 had a section for marking results. In order for there to be a result and in order for the pilot to report it, there were rules of some stripe. Of course that same section mentions that reults prior to April 1917 were mentioned in the report itself. Again, for there to be a result, you need...you get the picture, don't you. Do you or does anyone else know who came up with said rules.

[Graeme]

If you take a gander at the various documents relating to early combats, you'll note that a number of terms were used to denote the 'result' of the combat. For example, an enemy machine could be driven off, driven down, driven down damaged, driven down with the pilot/observer wounded, driven down out of control etc, etc. Even 'certain' victories could be claimed merely as shot down, brought down etc.

I seems that someone in higher command saw a need to respond to the propaganda (?) being released by the French and Germans regarding their victorious aircrew and required a more precise method of assessing the outcome of a combat. Who precisely that person was is open to debate.

The examples of Combat Reports (actually Army Form W. 3348) that I've retained range in date from June 1917 to September 1918 but speaking from memory the form had not changed significantly.

The earlier forms have space at the top for details of the squadron, aeroplane, armament, pilot, observer, locality, date, time, duty and height. Immediately beneath these details is space for Remarks on Hostile machine: - Type, armament, speed etc. Below this appears the narrative, mostly typed then signed by the crew although I have copies of handwritten reports by Don MacLaren (10 March 1918) and W G Barker (20 October 1917).

The later version of the Combat Report has the same general information at the top but after height appears Result with the categories Destroyed, Driven down out of control and Driven down.

To give an example of each, I have a report dated 3 June 1917 with narratives provided by Collishaw, Reid and FitzGibbon. These are typed with the pliots' signatures at the bottom; the report is countersigned by B C Bell, the squadron commander. Collishaw claimed an Albatros scout ou of control and in flames and Reid an Albatros scout out of control, this being confirmed to have crashed into a hedge in a small field by FitzGibbon. A manuscript entry against Collishaw's narrative reads "Out of control" (In Flames according to Above The Trenches) while written against Reid's is "Indecisive" (this appears as Destroyed in Above The Trenches). In the lower left hand corner appears a handwritten "HQ" above indecipherable initials.

A later combat report, submitted by Don MacLaren and A G Vlasto is dated 23 May 1918 and the narrative shows one out of control by MacLaren and one indecisive after being attacked by both pilots. The report is signed by both pilots and countersigned by Maj R H S Mealing, CO 46 Sqn. MacLaren's victory is listed in Above The Trenches as out of control and over Hans Oberlander of Jasta 30.

I'll try and scan in a couple of reports but they're pretty old now and while they're legible if you hold them at the right angle and screw your eyes up a bit, they might not copy too well. I'll give it a go tho'.

I did read somewhere (Maurice Baring's RFC HQ ?) that Trenchard went through combat reports but I wouldn't have thought he'd have had the time.

Good Lord, midnight already. Where has the evening gone?

'Night all.

Graeme

A number of years ago Stewart Taylor sent me his comments on my list of Canadian aces (some eye-openers in there!) and was kind enough to enclose photocopies of combat reports from the following:
Collishaw,Alexander (2),Reid,Atkey,McCall (3),McKeever,Quigley (2),Rosevear, and Hickey.
They make amazing readingand range from the hastily scrawled 13 Sqn reports by McCall to well-typed and detailed documents turned in by Quigley and others.

This thread is thought-provoking to me, in that I think the question merits some serious investigation. Just how formal was the evolution of the British victory system, and what impact does its apparent lack of structure, especially during the first years of the war, have on the numbers?

We know that initially the British did not want what they considered "unseemly" attention drawn to their fighter pilots, and away from the equally important work of their observation or bomber crews.

This was in stark contrast to the Germans, for instance, who placed the scores of their fighter pilots in the public spotlight from the beginning and set up a strict verification system to back it up. Probably because of the early success of the Fokker Eindekkers in establishing the first true fighter aircraft of the war, and the obvious morale boost publicizing their victories could bring, the Germans defined the role of the fighter as being to shoot down enemy aircraft. They created heroes based on the numbers, and maintained that measure of success through to the end of the war. As a pilot, how did you win a Blue Max? In the vast majority of cases, simply by shooting down a specific number of EA (the number requirement was increased as the war progressed, but it was a simple numbers game). The scores of top aces were well-known and well-publicized both among the pilots themselves and through the media. It was THE measuring stick for a fighter pilot's success on the German side.

A better understanding of the British "system" (if we can call it that) would be valuable. Initially, as stated, they made the decision not to have "aces" or a scoring system. I wonder how much of this decision was based on the moral high ground of not wanting to draw attention away from the work of other aircrew, and how much was based on the fact that the Germans were giving them a pasting during the Eindekker/Albatros years? Once the strategic decision was made to carry the fight well into German-held territory, there were also perfectly valid difficulties in establishing any kind of verifiable (witnessed) claim system. Put the two together, and you have some kind of score, not officially recognized, and based (initially at least) on Combat Reports which were not structured to allow accurate recording of results.

Did this attitude persist at the official level to the end of the war? It's a good question. I suspect that it did, and that the only concession to recording a score was an improvement to the Combat Reports form that Graeme mentions that added a "Results" column. There was probably no official support for it in the sense that we would think of today, but it would be important to know for sure.

Ed's comments are apt. I wonder what the emphasis placed on individual scores as opposed to the efforts of all flyers says.
The North American obsession with numbers - Sosa hits two homers, Lemieux scores three goals, Shaq has 30-point game,etc. - contrasts rather starkly with my first perusal of the sports page of a British newspaper back in 1969. I was on my first trip to the UK, and had attended a football (soccer) game so I wanted to read the comments on the match. After reading the entire half-page article, full of comments on the brilliant defensive efforts of various players,etc., I realized that the only mention of who had actually scored - the thing that would be most talked about in Chicago or Toronto - was limited to a single line.
Perhaps this speaks to our national viewpoints on things - the N.American attitude of who has the biggest movie deal, fattest record contract, highest total of home runs - and helps explain the RFC attitude towards not building up the reputations of a few aces.

Having said that, it appears from my readings of autobiographies and other materials that many or most of the British aces put a great deal more importance on shooting down EA, and therefore scores, than did the official stance. The press made the scores of the top German adversaries common knowledge, and when the scores of their peers were made public in citations in the Gazette or articles, they made note of those, too. It makes sense. If you're a fighter pilot, you know what your job is--it's to shoot down the enemy. And therefore the logical measure of your success is how many you've shot down...