What's that? And these?
And this?
Quick is it one of ours?
If you got this right as a member of the Observer Corps you may just have saved
the lives of dozens of civilians. The Battle of Britain was fought in the
air. Heralded as 'the few', just under three thousand RAF aircrew
faced Luftwaffe from July to October 1940.
- "Never, in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few" -
However throughout the battle a secret
army of 30,000 volunteers played a crucial role in their success
Standing day and night in hundreds of observer posts across Britain
it was in fact a network of highly trained plane spotters
that may just have swayed britain into victory.
- "From the southwest"
"Got'em, they're Junkers"
"four, southwest heading north east" "Standby" -
In the 1930s, it became increasingly clear that Germany's military was
rapidly expanding and this was especially true of its air
force the Luftwaffe. - "Here comes the Luftwaffe, in dozens of
flights, hundreds of planes" -
Britain was under no illusions that if war broke out with Germany the nation would be extremely
vulnerable to air raids that would be much more devastating than those it had
experienced in the First World War. Aaircraft speeds increased so much in the
interwar years that RAF fighters would not be able to intercept and prevent
attacks unless they had early warning. When Hugh Dowding was appointed the Chief
of RAF Fighter Command in 1936, he immediately set about to solve this problem.
So in addition to the networking system
set up by the Observer Corps in the 1920s and 30s
Dowding also added the new technology of radar as well as a system of command
and control that allowed the RAF to rapidly communicate
information through the chain of command. One of the most important aspects of the
Dowding System was that it allowed the RAF to know
when and where to expect enemy raids. So radar operators will be able to detect
raids forming across the channel and also
track them as they approach the coast. But the radar network had a very major
limitation in that the radar masts only looked out
to sea. So once the enemy aircraft crossed the
coast, the radar network was effectively blind
and this is where the Observer Corps came in.
When war broke out in 1939 the Observer Corps numbered some 30,000
volunteers and had around a thousand observer posts spread across Britain.
So during the Battle of Britain in 1940 the Observer Corps were
made up almost entirely of volunteers about 30,000 in number
and these volunteers were actually very highly trained and one of the most
important things that they were trained in was aircraft recognition
or determining whether the aircraft above them was friend or foe
So to learn aircraft recognition they'd use
booklets, playing cards, posters, models even films that would help them
identify aircraft silhouettes and at the same time they were also
highly trained in tracking and reporting enemy aircraft,
estimating altitudes and even detecting aircraft by sound using their ears
Posts were spaced apart at intervals of six to ten miles
and were organized into regional groups with each group having an observer
center or headquarters where post information was received and processed
So they basically reported the size of the raid, how many
enemy aircraft there were, sort of a general type,
its estimated height and its direction, so where it was going.
And then this would be processed in the observer center
where we plotted on a large table map in an operations room
and then this information will be looked at and
sent directly to raf fighter stations where they plot it on their own
table maps in an operations room and then the controller in the operations
room would use that to basically scramble his fighters and
send them to attack the enemy.
Ultimately it was the Dowding System and the significant role that the
Observer Corps played in it that gave the RAF the vital edge they
needed to achieve victory over the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain
At the moment the German aircraft crossed the coast
without the Observer Corps there would have been absolutely no way to track them,
there would have been no way for RAF fighter controllers to
tell their aircraft where to go, so without them
it would have more or less made the radar useless because
enemy aircraft could have changed direction, they could have changed height -
so this was why the Observer Core was so
important. In 1941 the Observer Corps was granted
the Royal prefix by King George VI in recognition of its important
contributions during the Battle of Britain and thereafter
It continued to play a significant role in the war including during the D-Day
landings. The observer posts and centres were
manned continuously until the 12th May 1945, four days after VE Day.
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