WW1-317 BRITISH PILOTS AND GROUND CREW

Royal Flying Corps (full English name: Royal Flying Corps, abbreviated as RFC) is a British Air Force term that was used from May 1912 to April 1918. At that time, the British Air Force was structurally and organizationally part of the Army. At the beginning of World War I, the RFC was created by a squadron of observation balloons and four squadrons. In the first months of the Great War, the RFC was primarily responsible for cooperating with its own artillery and performing photographic reconnaissance. Over time, the RFC pilots were tasked with air combat with enemy machines, carrying out bombing tasks and supporting their own land forces through the implementation of assault tasks. The significant expansion of the RFC's tasks resulted in the fact that in the course of World War I it was equipped with numerous planes such as the Sopwith Camel, Sopwith Pup, RAF RE.8 or Handley Page O / 400 (from the end of 1917). It is worth adding that in the first period of the Great War (1914-1916) the training standards for RFC pilots were not standardized. This only started to change in 1916, when it was assumed that a pilot must have at least 15 hours of flight time on a fighter plane before going into combat. However, the significant losses among the pilots in the RFC in 1916 and early 1917 forced further changes, which resulted in further changes in the spring of 1917. At the end of World War I, the fighter pilot training process was extended to 10-11 months, during which the average student spent at least 50 hours in the air on his own. It is worth adding that at the end of 1918, the RFC had about 4,000 combat aircraft and nearly 115,000 personnel!