Happy 75th Anniversary to all RAF Fighter Controllers and ABMs
Happy 75th Anniversary to all Royal Air Force Fighter Controllers and Aerospace Battle Managers.
Still Securing the Skies!
Prior to 1935 air commanders were not able to exercise any control over air defence battles; quite simply they had no idea where the enemy aircraft were until it was too late to prevent attacks on the UK and they had little or no information on where their fighter aircraft were once they had been scrambled.
The discovery of radar in 1935 changed the whole situation. Air Chief Marshal Dowding recognised that radar was a battle-winning technological advance and, as Commander in Chief of Fighter Command, worked tirelessly to build a system of air defence which included innovations such as the creation of the long-range Chain Home radar network, the shorter-range radars known as Chain Home (Low) and a Filter Centre which was based at Royal Air Force Bentley Priory.
Critical to the operation of this rapidly growing air defence system was a new airman trade known as Clerk Special Duties. Clerks Special Duties were deployed throughout the system as radar operators, plotters and tellers at both operations centres and at the Filter Centre.
However radar information was of little or no use in its ‘raw’ form and required skilled analysis to produce a coherent and timely air picture from which the ebb and flow of the air battle could be managed; this became known as filtering and put the Filter Centre at the very heart of the air defence system.
Every radar contact was reported to the Filter Centre and plotted on a gridded map table. There were many duplications and ambiguities that had to be resolved to determine an accurate three-dimensional track with an identity. The product of this complex analysis then had to be disseminated rapidly to operations rooms across the UK so that commanders could successfully manage their part of the Battle of Britain from a common air picture.
Initially the filtering process was developed and designed by scientists and it worked well. However, when the Royal Air Force took over the filtering task, the performance deteriorated markedly because personnel were drafted into the job at SNCO level from other trades without any appreciation of the skill required to make it work. This was rectified by specifically recruiting Royal Air Force personnel with a scientific or mathematical aptitude and elevating the personnel to the status of an officer in recognition of the importance of the task.
The first 15 Filterer Officers took up post from 10th June 1940 and the performance of the Filter Centre improved dramatically. The commissioning of these Filterer Officers was the de facto birth of a Royal Air Force specialisation called Fighter Control.
From this small beginning, the expansion of air defence systems was very rapid with the greatest demand coming from overseas theatres of operation where the deployment of radar and filter centres was growing at an almost unsustainable rate. The problem was further exacerbated in 1941 when filtering was de-centralised from Royal Air Force Bentley Priory with 7 Filter Centres being established in the UK alone.
During the Battle of Britain, pilots initially conducted the operational task of fighter control, which was to become the name of the specialisation for nearly 70 years. Sector commanders were delegated tactical control of fighters within a defined geographical area and a team of sector controllers assisted them. Working from the common tactical air picture disseminated from the Filter Centre which was further augmented by Observer Corps information and plotted on the operations table, the sector controllers could scramble fighters against enemy attacks. Once airborne, the position of the Royal Air Force fighters was also plotted on the operations table based upon triangulated information from radio transmissions. With both enemy and friendly forces plotted on the same operations table, the sector controllers now had the 2 main ingredients for effectively countering the enemy air threat. Consequently, the controllers could then direct fighters into a tactically advantageous position to attack the enemy formations.
From September 1940 the enemy changed tactics and launched more night attacks and the sector system of control with its time lags and lack of overland information during the night, was not able to counter this new threat.
This led to the next significant step in the development of the Fighter Control specialisation, the creation of Ground Controlled Interception units. The development of radars that rotated to scan 360 degrees and technical advancements which enabled an aircraft’s position and movement to be viewed in plan position meant that aircraft could now be tracked overland day or night and the data produced provided an accurate basis for interception. Initially 6 ground controlled interception units were commissioned and it seemed sensible to redeploy sector controllers from the sector stations to act as Interception Controllers. Sadly the results were quite varied but the immediate impact and success of Ground Controlled Interception units led to a very rapid expansion in the number of units and there were simply not enough sector controllers available and so it became necessary to train ab initio Interception Controllers; and the second key sub-specialisation of Fighter Control was created.
75 years on, Aerospace Battle Managers continue the legacy of those very first Fighter Controllers as they keep a constant watch over UK skies to detect, recognise and identify all the aircraft and control any fighter aircraft that may be required to react to defend our nation from attack. Still Securing the Skies!