Two Pilots
The answer was simple, Brian. It was a luxury that we could not afford. The earlier days of the war , we did not have enough pilots to replace the losses. The Battle of Britain was , probably a far closer run thing than the Battle of Waterloo as we were down to our very last few pilots. Thanks to Beaverbrook we had the mqchines but the training programmes in the U.K. were virtually useless due to our weather problems and the far flung Empire Training programme was a long and arduous process. The US came to our rescue with the Arnold and, later the Towers schemes but it took time.
The decision was made that second pilots were not to be used except for training purposes and, even then, only very rarely as we just could not afford the loss of two pilots with one machine.
From about mid 1944 the position changed and the unfortunate trainees found themselves destined for the Glider pilots lost at fiascoes like Arnhem. By that time though, the Air superiority had become ours. The US Air Force by the very nature of their Operations which, apart from the strategic selection of daylight targets was also deliberately designed to bring the Luftwaffe up and to destroy as many of the Fighters as possible also brought on the real danger of the Pilot being incapacitated and by very nature of the long and tiring Formation Flying, two pilots were necessary and , like their magnificent capacity for churning out machines and machinery, they were able to provide the neccessary pilots. We stuck it out and turned the tide but we have a lot to thank the USA for.