Bomber Command Fighter Affiliation Exercises

[gruad]

Operational histories describe Fighter Affiliation Exercises as footnotes in the stories where I assume RAF fighters pretended to intercept the bombers and the gunners tried to draw a bead and pilots practiced their evasive manoeuvres, but I would be interested to know what really went on.

1. What kinds of fighters attacked what kind of bombers? You would think a Beaufighter was a good NF equivalent of the Ju88 or Me110.

2. Were the exercises held at night or in the day. It must have been useful to try out the radars during the day?

3. Did the bombers carry dummy bombs a big fuel loads for realistic simulation?

4. Did it improve the bomber's confidence to survive given a visual encounter with a NF would mean a 50% chance of being shot down?

5. How frequently did these occur in relation to actual raids?

 

[EwenS]

The units involved in fighter affiliation work with Bomber Command can be found amongst the flights in the 1600 series labelled as (Bomber) Defence Training Flight. 6 Flights were formed in June 1943 in the Groups of Training Command responsible for controlling the OTUs training bomber crews.

1681 & 1682 in 91 Group
1683 & 1684 in 92 Group
1685 & 1686 in 93 Group.
Main equipment was Tomahawk I/IIa/IIb and Hurricane FB.IIc and the odd Martinet target tug.

These units all disbanded in Aug 1944.

In Feb 1944 a new batch of (Bomber) Defence Training Flights were created within the various Bomber Command Groups.
No.1687 in 1 Group. Main eqpt Spitfire II/Vb, Hurricane FB.IIc and the odd Martinet and Oxford.
No. 1688 in 3 Group. Main eqpt Spitfire VB, Hurricane IIc/IV plus the odd Tiger Moth, Martinet, Oxford and even a Wellington.
These two disbanded in Oct 1946.
No. 1689 in 4 Group Main eqpt as above but also had at least one Beaufighter VI, a Defiant TT.III. Disbanded 7 May 1945 (this Group was switched from Bomber to Transport Command at that point so the requirement for fighter affiliation disappeared).
No. 1690 in 5 Group. Main eqpt as above. Disbanded 12 Oct 1945.
No 1695 in 6 Group. Main eqpt as above. Disbanded 28 July 1945 at which point many of the Canadian squadrons were returning to Canada.
No. 1696 in 8 Group. Main eqpt as above. Disbanded 28 Sept 1945.

See "Flying Training And Support Units since 1912" by Ray Sturtivant with John Hamlin, published by Air Britain.
.
As you can see the aircraft forming the main equipment of these units were single engined, single seaters, unsuitable for use at night so fighter affiliation exercises were part of the on going daylight training regime for bomber crews.

IIRC crews could use coloured goggles or screens to simulate flying at night.

There were a host of training flights within Bomber Command fulfilling different functions for on going training of crews. For example Blind / Beam Approach Training Flights, Target Towing Flights etc.

Bomber Command crews did a fair bit of non-operational flying in daytime anyway, as they required to air test their aircraft before flying operational sorties, to ensure everything was operating as it should. So fitting various training sorties around those would not have been a great additional burden. AIUI these training sorties were carried out at lower AUW than used on operations and were much shorter in duration. The evasive manoeuvres practiced were the same regardless of aircraft weight.

Training of night fighter crews was a totally separate operation carried out at squadron level, often by pairs of crews practicing on each other in turn.

 

[gruad]

Story based on Ewen's reply.

"Alright, you useless shower! Pay attention, especially you, 'Brains.' This afternoon, we are the designated 'live bait' for the BDTF. Our job is to survive. Their job is to 'kill' us. The pilots in those P-40s are either washed-up veterans or hotshots itching for a fight. They will not be gentle. We cannot just fly straight and level. If we do, we will be down faster than you can say 'Corkscrew.'
"To simulate a night action in daylight, we're going 'monotone.' If you look out your window and see everything in grayscale, don't panic. It means your 'night vision'—aka the coloured filters—is in, and you're actually seeing the world as a German night-fighter pilot does, relying on radar and luck. It means you are blind.
"You have to find them before they find us. That is the only rule. That is the only truth. Now, get to your stations. If we mess this up, we are all going back to flying trainers, and I, for one, would rather be on a bomber facing real German flak than flying some leaky, clapped-out trainer in Lincolnshire!"
The crew scrambled into the massive, echoing belly of the Avro Lancaster Mk.III, a beast that felt impossibly vast on the ground and impossibly vulnerable in the air. This aircraft, 'P for Peter,' was a BDTF machine, a scarred but functional veteran of too many operations, its four Merlin engines rumbling with a raw, resonant power that felt personal. November light—pale, watery, and gray—filtered through the perspex, casting long, stark shadows.
For Johnny 'Brains' Evans, the wireless operator, the operation began not with a view, but with a green, flickering CRT screen tucked into his section of the console. He was the guardian of Fishpond, the newly fitted warning radar. It was a crude, experimental box, a spinning antenna adaptation of H2S sending out radio pulses, scanning the pitch-black void directly behind and below their Lancaster. Its job was simple and terrifying: to reveal the invisible stalker.
Brains felt the Lanc grunt as it finally lumbered off the concrete runway and began its slow, heavy climb toward 20,000 feet, the prescribed altitude for the day's training scenario. Above them, the sky was a dome of bright, pale blue, but Brains didn't see the light. In his corner, surrounded by the hum of electronics and the heavy smell of fuel and hydraulic oil, he stared into the green heart of the Fishpond scope.
For the first thirty minutes, the scope was quiet, showing only clutter and noise. The vastness of the sky was empty on his screen, and a creeping boredom began to settle over the crew.
In the mid-upper turret, 'Shorty' groaned. "This is a wild goose chase. Where are they? I can't see anything but clouds."
"Stay focused, Shorty," crackled the voice of Flight Sergeant Miller, the pilot. "They are out there. Just assume they are already locked on."
In the tail, 'Dusty,' the rearmost gunner, was already fighting off a chill. "I swear I saw something, a glint… or maybe it was just a reflection in this stupid glass."
At 18,000 feet, the landscape below was a patchwork of green and brown, the English coastline a blurred line to the east. The silence on the intercom was heavy, broken only by the rhythmic thrum of the Merlins and the slight hiss of the radio static.
And then, Brains saw it.
It wasn't a blip, exactly. It was a ripple. A disruption in the noise, perhaps four o'clock, very low, moving slow, maybe 1,000 yards. He wasn't sure. Was it the ground? Was it just interference? He blinked, hard. The ripple persisted, slightly brighter.
"Skipper," Brains crackled. "Brains here. I have a contact on Fishpond. Extremely low, four o'clock, range around 900 yards. I... I think it's our friend."
Silence stretched for a heartbeat. Then, "Are you sure, Brains?"
"It's a target, Skipper. It's moving with us, staying low. He's masking in the ground clutter."
"Right," Miller said, his voice instantly tightening. "All stations: Brains has a visual, four o'clock low. Dusty, focus on that area, but do not—I repeat, DO NOT—shoot. We are practicing evasion, not starting a air war."
Dusty, in the tail turret, squinted through the crosshairs into the blinding bright haze. "Roger, Skipper. I'm on it. Can't see a damn thing below us, though. This glare is killer."
"Brains," Miller said. "Tell me where he is."
"Still low, still four o'clock. He's... he's climbing. Slowly. About 600 yards now."
"Dusty, he's coming up. Shift your gaze down."
"Copy that, Skipper. Looking down... looking... wait."
Dusty paused. He couldn't see the aircraft, but he saw something else. A flicker in the vast, bright sky. A flash of light that wasn't sunlight reflecting off the metal.
"I have him!" Dusty shouted, his voice a strained whisper. "I have a contact! Four o'clock low... just a flash... a glare." He was lying; he had seen the subtle distortion of the P-40, its profile almost impossible to spot against the ground and the low sunlight. But he knew he saw something.
"Keep watching him, Dusty," Miller ordered. "Shorty, can you see him?"
"Negative," Shorty said, turning his turret. "Just sky."
"He's 500 yards. Climbing. He's going to attack," Brains warned.
Miller gripped the control yoke. He had one card to play, a maneuver designed to break a night fighter's aim and throw the bomber into a unpredictable dive.
"Alright, boys, listen up. We're going down. Brains, tell me when he makes his move."
At 400 yards, the target on the Fishpond scope was clear, no longer a faint ripple, but a steady, definite spot. It was committing to the run.
"Now, Skipper! He's attacking!" Brains yelled.
"CORKSCREW PORT! GO!" Miller bellowed, and he didn't gently turn. He slammed the controls.
The massive Lancaster, an aircraft designed for heavy lifting, executed a violent, banking dive. The port wing dropped, the engines screamed, and the entire airframe groaned. G-force, a heavy, oppressive hand, crushed the crew into their seats. The windows became streaks of green and blue, the sky a blurred mess as they dove almost vertically and turned hard left.
In the back, Dusty was slammed into the side of the tail turret, his body compressed, his vision blurring. He was falling, but he was also rotating, the ground screaming toward him at an impossible angle.
In the mid-upper turret, Shorty was nearly thrown clear. "What the hell!" he shouted, fighting to stay conscious.
"Hold on, everyone!" Miller yelled over the engine roar. "Change of plan! CORKSCREW STARBOARD! GO!"
Miller, pulling against the crushing gravity, slammed the controls back. The Lancaster, still screaming in its dive, executed a second violent turn, this one a climbing roll to the right. The transition was so abrupt, the structural forces so intense, that the rivets felt like they were vibrating out.
But this second, unpredictable turn was the critical moment.
As the Lancaster clawed its way out of the dive and into a climbing turn, the world suddenly shifted. The low, blind spot behind them was now, momentarily, the high ground. The P-40, which had expected to dive under the original corkscrew to follow the bomber, was instead thrown wide. It was diving through the point where the Lancaster should have been.
Dusty, still fighting the crushing Gs, saw it. It wasn't the blurry speck he had tracked earlier. As the Lancaster twisted, the P-40 burst into view, its profile massive, stark, and perfectly illuminated by the sun, perhaps just 200 yards away, slightly low, its nose pointed uselessly at the sky. It was right there.
"I have him! I have him LOCKED!" Dusty screamed, his voice raw. "He's right on my crosshairs! I'm right on him!"
In his turret, Shorty, regaining his senses as the forces normalized, spun his guns. "I see him too! I can get a shot!"
"DON'T SHOOT!" Miller yelled, fighting to level the aircraft. "He's our own man!"
The P-40, realizing its attack had failed, banked hard, its pilot having overshot by a significant margin. The Curtiss fighter, once a phantom on a green screen, was now clearly visible, its distinctive, snarling 'shark mouth' painted on the nose, flashing only 100 feet past their port wing as it pulled away. The pilot gave a brief wave as he broke left, disappearing into the glare.
For a long, heavy minute, the intercom was silent, save for the collective, ragged breathing of seven men. Miller slowly eased the Lancaster back into a steady climb. The Fishpond scope was clear.
A half-hour later, 'P for Peter' lined up for landing. The wheels touched the concrete with a heavy rumble, and the massive bomber taxied to a halt, its Merlins finally sputtering to a stop, leaving only a resonant, deep silence.
The crew assembled in the small, spartan briefing room, the air thick with cigarette smoke and the scent of nervous tension. The intelligence officer, a weary-looking squadron leader, tapped his pen on a clipboard. The flight lieutenant from the BDTF—the P-40 pilot, a man with tired eyes but a wolfish smile—leaned against the doorway.
"Alright, gentlemen," the squadron leader began. "A good flight. No accidents, which is always the primary goal. Now, report."
Miller took the lead. "We flew the prescribed course at 18,000. We had a solid warning from the Fishpond radar at 900 yards. Wireless operator guided the gunners, and we initiated a corkscrew port, followed by a violent turn to starboard. Gunner confirmed target acquisition at around 200 yards after the second turn."
The BDTF pilot, Flight Lieutenant Davies, stepped forward. "My account is... frustratingly similar. I was at 17,000, masking in the ground glare, waiting. I had a solid lock. I committed to the dive-and-climb attack at about 400 yards. I was expecting the standard single corkscrew, likely to starboard, and was prepared to follow."
He paused, a wry smile touching his lips. "But that second turn... that was, frankly, suicidal. It was brilliant. I didn't just miss. I was completely thrown. By the time I recovered and pulled out of the dive, I was practically on top of you, hopelessly out of position, and, as your tail gunner correctly reported, right in the crosshairs. My aircraft was completely, and utterly, in your kill zone. If this had been a live fight, I would have been a flaming wreck."
The intelligence officer nodded slowly. "And what about you, Flight Sergeant Miller? Had this been a real attack, what is your assessment?"
Miller didn't hesitate. "He had us, sir. Without Fishpond, we wouldn't have known he was there until his tracer hit. But even with the warning, it was a close-run thing. If our gunners hadn't spotted him and guided that second turn, he would have had us. We got him, yes, but he came closer to getting us than I'd like to admit. That corkscrew... it's unpredictable. If we get the timing wrong, or if we do it too slow, we're just making ourselves an easier target."
Dusty, in the back of the room, still feeling the G-forces, muttered loud enough to be heard, "I saw that whole nose. Every paint chip on it. He didn't just miss, sir. We had him cold. Brains called it, the Skipper flew it, and I caught it. If that was real... we would have given him a hell of a surprise."
The intelligence officer looked from the weary pilot to the cocky gunner and the tired P-40 pilot. "Good. Good debrief. This is the whole point, isn't it? To find the line between survival and being shot down. Today, you found that line. And today, you were on the right side of it."
As the crew filed out into the cold November afternoon, Brains, his eyes still seeing the green flicker of the Fishpond screen, caught Miller's gaze. "Skipper," he said quietly. "He was so close. I saw him. That second turn... you nearly pulled the plane apart."
Miller managed a tired smile. "Brains, sometimes the only way to avoid the crash is to fly so hard the plane thinks it's already crashing. But the most important thing is, you saw him first. The gunners found him, and we survived. That's the only victory we need."
They walked back toward the barracks, the huge shape of 'P for Peter' casting a long shadow on the tarmac. It was a scar-tissue Lancaster, an old bird in a training unit, but it was their bird, and today, against an invisible, theoretical killer, it had done its job. They had flown the corkscrew, and they had survived.

 

[ColFord]

Pilots of RAF units flying fighter type aircraft other than the BDTFs also flew fighter affiliation with aircraft from Bomber Command operational units and bomber OTUs. It served a training purpose for both, and often involved units located reasonably close to each other. The BDTFs largely focussed their flying activity with the OTUs. Units of Fighter Command, and also Army Cooperation Command Tomahawks and Mustangs are recorded in their ORBs flying Fighter Affiliation with various bomber units. The ACC Squadrons in particular up until mid-1943 did a lot of fighter affiliation with the light bomber units of 2 Group - both working in the same low to medium altitude operational range - with ACC units also participating in larger exercises with 2 Group in practicing low altitude fighter escort procedures and tactics, with Fighter Command Spitfire and Typhoon units playing the 'attackers'.