THE choice of Syerston as the first of
the Royal Air Force's flying training schools to be equipped
exclusively with the new Jet Provost trainer is an event of no small
importance in the annals of Nottinghamshire, since it marks the
opening of a new era in the history of flying training. Since the
earliest days of the Royal Air Force many airfields in this county
have been the homes of flying training schools, and it is fitting
that one of them should be chosen as the first to put into operation
a new system of military pilot training.
When Syerston and the other flying training schools have received
their full complement of Jet Provost trainers every pupil pilot in
the Royal Air Force will start his flying career and complete the
whole of his basic training on jet aircraft. In adopting this new
method the Royal Air Force is giving a lead to all the air forces of
the world.
The development of flying training over the past half-century has
been a gradual process, both the aircraft and the techniques used
having been in the main gradually evolved. In neither aircraft nor
techniques has there hitherto been any revolutionary change.
Progress has been steady but gradual - from the open to the enclosed
cockpit, from the biplane to the monoplane, from fixed-to
variable-pitch constant-speed propellers. Flaps have been
introduced, and wheel brakes, and there has been a striking increase
in the array of controls and instruments which these innovations
have made necessary. Methods of communication between instructor and
pupil have likewise developed from the early hand signals to a
simple speaking tube, and from this in turn to the modern electrical
" intercomm."
Instrument flying and reliance on an increasing variety of radio
communications and navigational aids have become a commonplace to
the pilot of today, and all these developments are necessarily
reflected in the syllabus which governs the training of modern
service pilots - from their very first flight.
It might well be imagined that the increasing complexity and higher
performance of modern training aircraft would add greatly to the
time needed to train their pupil pilots, but this is not so. Indeed,
it is a striking fact that in the thirty years separating the de
Havilland Moth from the Hunting Jet Provost the amount of dual
instruction required by the average R.A.F. pupil before he is ready
for his first solo has increased scarcely at all, this despite the
tremendous increase in the power, weight and speed of the modern
trainer and its range of equipment.
This fact undoubtedly results in large measure from advances in
aerodynamic knowledge and aircraft design, from the continuing
development of instructional techniques and, almost as certainly,
from the adoption of the now standard side-by-side seating
arrangement which allows both instructor and pupil to see as well as
hear and feel what the other is doing. But perhaps most important of
all is the fact that the innate ability of the average pupil pilot
has in the past been sadly underrated.
Very few flying instructors of twenty years ago would have believed
that pupils with no previous flying experience could handle an
aircraft such as the pistonengined Provost unaided after no more
than ten or eleven hours of dual instruction. Yet in the past few
years hundreds have done so. Still fewer, if any at all, would have
believed that such pupils could, with no more preliminary training,
equally well handle a jet-powered aircraft - had such an aircraft
been thought of at that time. Yet their ability to do so has been
proved beyond dispute.
When the conventional piston-engines appeared some years ago to be
reaching the limits of their development, and when it began to
appear that the performance of the aircraft they powered was for
this reason likewise reaching its limit, the advent of Frank
Whittle's turbo-jet engine opened up new possibilities, the full
extent of which has yet to be realised. As is always the case when
any new equipment is brought into use, it had now to be decided at
what stage in his training the pilot should be introduced to these
new jet-powered aircraft.
The first application of jet propulsion was to a new generation of
front-line fighters, knowledge of the new handling techniques
involved being passed on by their test pilots to a limited number of
selected and highly experienced fighter pilots. As more experience
was gained conversion to jet aircraft became normal for all
operational R.A.F. pilots, and in time special training units were
established for the conversion of newly-qualified pilots to jet
fighters (some of which had by then been converted to dual control).
At a still later stage the Advanced Flying Schools of Flying
Training Command were equipped with jet trainers (de Havilland
Vampires), the result of this being, that on graduation the newly
qualified pilots had received approximately one half of his training
on jet aircraft.
It is clearly illogical to use piston-engined aircraft for the basic
training of pilots in an air force which is destined to become
virtually all-jet, and over and above this there are two very real
objections to this system of pilot training.It is not possible in
this short article to analyse the differences in the techniques of
flying piston-engined and jet aircraft ; it must suffice to say that
there are differences and that these differences can in some
circumstances be vital. This is not to say that one is more
difficult so handle than the other ; it is merely that they are
essentially different. |
It is a basic principle in teaching
whatever the subject that no instruction should be given at any
stage of the curriculum which must later be "unlearned" before
further progress can be made. But where a pilot receives his primary
training on piston-engined aircraft and his advanced training on
jets this is precisely what must happen. That is the first objection
to the mixed-training scheme.
The second is that the advanced jet trainers are relatively
high-performance aircraft which are expensive in both first cost and
operation. It is therefore desirable in the interests of economy
that their use shall be reserved as far as possible for the high
speed and high-altitude, flying for which they are particularly
suited. But before he can absorb this type of training the pupil
must first be introduced to the basic principles of jet flying, and
to use the costly advanced jet trainer for this purpose is neither
economical nor efficient.
To meet these criticisms of the mixed-training system it was
suggested some years ago that the training of pilots for a
preponderantly jet Royal Air Force should be done exclusively on jet
aircraft from the start, a suggestion which was at first received
with considerable scepticism. Resistance to this proposal was to be
expected, since in most people's minds the turbo-jet engine was for
long associated only with very high-performance aircraft, and
certainly not with the docile and relatively low-speed aircraft
required for primary flying training. Past developments in primary
trainers had, as we have said, been gradual and unspectacular; the
forward step now proposed appeared to many to be excessive and
altogether impracticable
As designers and builders of the
Royal Air Force's two previous standard basic trainers, the Prentice
and the piston-engined Provost, Hunting Aircraft had for several
years past made a close study of flying training requirements and
methods. Basing their opinion on this experience they firmly
advocated the possibility of designing a primary jet trainer which,
while having a far higher all-round performance than its piston-engined
predecessor, would at the same time retain all the docile handling
qualities (particularly at the lower end of the speed range) which
had made the piston engined Provost so successful as an "ab initio"
and basic trainer.
The doubters having been partially won over, an order was placed for
a small number of the original Mark 1 version of the jet Provost,
and with these a prolonged and exceedingly thorough pupil-training
evaluation was undertaken by No. 2 Flying Training School when it
was stationed at Hullavington, this involving approximately 6,700
hours of flying and the training of some 50 -pupils. Long before
this evaluation was completed doubts had given way to conviction. It
had been proved conclusively that the all-jet training concept was
practible, highly effective and economical. This evalution of the
proposed new jet trainer was by far the most comprehensive ever
undertaken by our own or any other air force.
At the same time Hunting Aircraft
went ahead with an extensive programme of overseas tours to prove
the performance of the Jet Provost in every type of climate and
under the widest range of operating conditions. It has flown in the
depth of winter in Scandinavia and in the hottest weather in Aden,
India and Pakistan ; it has flown in Canada and the United States,
in Trinidad and in Australia ; in Ecuador it has operated from
airfields ranging from sea-level to 10,000 feet up ; it has been
flown over the Andes . . . these are some of the gruelling tests to
which the Jet Provost has been subjected during the 11,000 hours of
flying completed with it before the new trainers entered regular
Royal Air Force service at No. 2 Flying Training School, Syerston.
During all this
searching evaluation and testing many valuable lessons have been
learned, and 'all this experience has been embodied in the latest
Mark 3 version of the Jet Provost with which Syerston is now
equipped. From Syerston will henceforth issue a flow of jet-trained
pupils who will have wasted no time in learning techniques which
they will not need at later stages in their flying. Nothing they
learn here will have to be "unlearned" afterwards. From start to
finish, from primary to advanced training, from advanced training to
operational flying, there will be no interruption or delay in the
progressive and continuous development of their education as pilots
of the Jet Age. |