Vendome

Bulldog90 · 19 August 2008, 08:34 PM

Hi,

Can a couple of you comment for me on the improtance of the Vendome airfield in France to the RFC in 1917. It keeps popping up in some of my reading, but I can't fnd much out about it. Was it sort of like a finishing school for pilots on their way to a front line unit? A place where they could learn to recognize what the war looked like from above?

Thanks,

Bulldog 90

Grinseed · 20 August 2008, 05:24 PM

G'day Bulldog,
I have not come across Vendome in any readings of my own. There is a town of Vendome about 250 kms south of Amiens which puts any airfield there way out of the normal sphere of activity of the RFC.

Its not likely that it was finishing school for new pilots, because as I understand it, once the required flying time for training in England was met, new RFC pilots went to France with their squadrons direct or to such places as St Omer and St Pol and waited in pilot pools for posting with a squadron. Any 'finishing' was usually done with the squadron under the watchful eye of the squadron commander in the squadron's area of operations (in later years at least).

Maybe it was a testing airfield where French and English engineers examined each other's new machines and engines etc and compared notes?

Perhaps there is a Vendome in Canada where the canucks did a lot of their own flight training?

Can you reveal where you have read about Vendome and the RFC? You've gone and made me really curious now.

Cheers Grinseed

Bulldog90 · 21 August 2008, 06:30 AM

Hi Grins,

I just finished a book called Skyhawks about Indian pilots that flew for the British and the author mentions Vendome several times, but when I looked it up there wasn't much to be found. It does kind of make sense though that a pilot coming from England, which was largely untouched by the war would need to come to France and learn to recognize things on the ground in a war zone. You know, these are our guns, those are their guns, landmarks, trenches, etc...

Cheers,

Bulldog 90

Dan_San_Abbott · 21 August 2008, 08:12 PM

bulldog90:
Sorry, I can't be of any help. I drew a complete blank on this one. My first thoought was Place Vendome in Paris. Maybe there was something there in the way of a "Finishing School" for new pilots, a test of their manhood??
Blue skies,
Dan-San

Shredward · 30 August 2008, 07:38 PM

Vendome was an RNAS flight training school to some point in mid 1917, and I think 12(N) was operating from it - I'll check when I get home. It then seems to have been taken over by the RFC. It was still operating as an RAF flight-training school in the fall of 1918. Mike Westrop may have more on it.
Cheers,
shredward