Tucked away on the far side of RAF Cranwell, just off Rauceby Lane, is one of the most important military establishments in the United Kingdom. It's not a secret, for the unit's aircraft can be clearly seen parked outside their hangar and the aircraft are visible in the Cranwell circuit day in and day out, but No 1 Elementary Flying Training School remains of vital importance to the defence of our nation and, of course, operations further afield.
"What we do here is very robust," says Group Captain Dave Lee, OC 1 EFTS. "In just 55 hours our students go from little or no experience to flying formation, low level navigation and complex aerobatics. We give them a very good grounding, they are already pretty good pilots by the time they leave here, and this is just the first stage of their training."
The simple fact is that 1 EFTS is responsible for fixed wing elementary pilot training for all three UK armed services as well as overseas pilots from a host of allied nations, and it is from the fairly non-descript buildings the unit occupies that every single future military pilot will begin full-time flying training, although prospective Army and Royal Navy pilots do undertake some grading as part of their selection process at Middle Wallop and Yeovilton respectively.
There is nothing non-descript about the expertise that 1 EFTS has at its disposal to fulfil its mission, however, and the mission is more than just pilot training - with instructor training and standardisation and navigation training for ab initio Weapons Systems Operators also coming under the 1 EFTS remit. The QFIs (Qualified Flying Instructors) we meet at Cranwell come from two groups, namely those who have most recently served on the frontline before crossing over to the world of instruction and also a significant number of full time RAF Reserve officers, such as Flt Lt Bill Ramsey, our host for the day and the 2009 / 2010 Tutor display pilot. There are usually 12 instructors on each squadron - split 50/50 between RAF and RAF Reserve officers.
Bill and his Reserve colleagues can boast not only a vast amount of military flying hours and instructional experience but many of them have also risen to the highest echelons of the Royal Air Force itself. During our visit we meet not one but two former Commandants of the Central Flying School, an Air Vice Marshal, a former commander of Joint Force Harrier and one pilot who has completed no less than 12,000 hours of RAF flying, with a tour on the Lightning, two on the Phantom and 3000 hours on the Hawk alone! This pool of experience helps make our elementary flying training the envy of many nations and among the most highly regarded anywhere in the world.
"We've been so lucky with the Full Time Reserve service and we have instructors here beyond compare, people we would otherwise have lost to retirement many years ago, and for EFT the experience and continuity they offer it is so important and makes such a difference," says Group Captain Lee.
"Historically the Royal Air Force has dipped in and out of EFT," explains Sqn Ldr Nick Goodwyn, OC 115(R) Squadron, which has a specific responsibility for training instructors on behalf of the CFS.
If you look back to World War Two, pilots would complete 55 hours on the Tiger Moth with a syllabus which essentially was not too different to that which we teach now. In the 50s and 60s we went to complete jet training with the Jet Provost, and that of course became the Tucano in the 1990s."
A report in 2004 concluded that EFT should once again be added to the training mix in its own right, a decision which saw the new squadrons formed and, more recently, given Reserve status.
The ethos behind EFT is very interesting and the RAF is actively recruiting pilots, despite what you might deduce from reading the newspapers. There is still a requirement for candidates to come through the OASC (Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre) to enter the flying training pipeline, and for many young men and women it remains a highly prized career.
"There are still a lot of people knocking on the door," confirms Sqn Ldr Goodwyn. "Military flying remains an incredibly valuable, worthwhile and exciting career. We've been through, and are still going through, an extensive period of operations and the result of that high operational tempo is that many young people come in to this knowing that they are likely to go on to active operations. They really are very focussed."
The training task does vary of course, but over the next financial year in the region of 140 pilots will be trained for the RAF along with approximately 60 Royal Navy and Army Air Corps helicopter and fast jet pilots. The focus at the moment lies largely with the multi-engine and rotary fleets, although that can change depending on the requirement for the frontline squadrons.
On average twelve courses are run per year with up to 15 students per course. It is a 55 hour course, rationalised from 65 hours a couple of years ago. The RN has also reduced its course to 55 hours in line with the RAF whereas the Army has a shorter course, omitting some fixed-wing skills not relevant to its rotary wing requirements. It's not just about the UK either, and EFT is also responsible for training a significant number of foreign and commonwealth pilots, largely at the moment from the Middle East, with students from Iraq and Kuwait for example.
"We teach people who can't fly aeroplanes to fly aeroplanes," says Nick. "These are core skills that you really can't get away from and one of the only places in military flying training that students can get the basic stick and rudder instruction, although we are now also increasingly focussed on airmanship and CRM."
With the Royal Navy and Army retiring their Firefly aircraft at the end of February the Grob 115E Tutor is now used exclusively by all three services for EFT and grading with a fleet of 97 aircraft in standard fit and 28 which feature a slightly improved glass cockpit. These aircraft are operated on a contractual basis and when the EFT contract came up for renewal two years ago it was won by VT Group who proposed a rationalisation of the fleet to Tutor only, a decision which made complete sense from both a maintenance and standardisation perspective.
"The Tutor is a good piece of kit" says Gp Capt Lee, "and there are many things which make it a great training platform. It is sufficiently forgiving that you can fire a student off in it and know that they can completely mess it up and still recover the situation and bring themselves and the aircraft home again!
"On the other hand it will bite if you push it and, in a max rate turn for example, if you keep pulling it will give you all the warning in the world but it will stall, and that's great for our instructors as it's such a useful training tool. You need an aircraft which allows you to train basic flying skills safely but with handling characteristics which will challenge them - the Tutor does all that."
University Air Squadrons also remain an important part of the remit for 1 EFTS, and with 14 squadrons spread across the country it means that no matter where a student decides to study then a UAS should be within reasonable reach. It was of course Trenchard himself, the father of the Royal Air Force, who advocated the formation of the first University Air Squadrons in the mid 1930s to develop air mindedness among the younger generations, some of whom would hopefully go into the armed forces themselves - something which hasn't really changed to this day.
"It gives people a great chance to see what life is like in the RAF and perhaps choose to go on and make that their career, and we still have scholarship and bursary schemes to encourage that for anyone, not just potential aircrew," says Wg Cdr Goodwyn.
"These squadrons are not especially 'staff-heavy' so they are extremely cost effective with just two full-time instructors, and UAS members are offered ten hours of flying (in the Tutor) for the 2 years they have membership of that squadron. Exceptionally, when it doesn't hamper their final exams, students may be offered a third year. This syllabus can take them solo, out of the circuit and almost to PPL standard."
Interestingly, any student starting on an EFT squadron starts at exactly the same point whether he or she has completed the UAS syllabus or not, and while this thirty hours of flying is definitely an advantage at the start of EFT, learning curves generally average out after around 20 / 25 sorties and most students then find themselves at a similar level.
One question persists during our visit to 1 EFTS - what kind of people are our armed forces looking for to go on and succeed as aircrew? Technology is moving on all the time and the aircraft of today are very different to those of yesterday and indeed those we will be operating in the future. How has this impacted on what is required of the men and women who want to make a career of military aviation?
"We are selecting different people now I think," says Gp Cpt Lee, "certainly from the time when I was selected. Back then OASC made its choices based 75% on a candidate's motor skills and 25% on cognitive skills as the aircraft then were quite difficult to fly, and that was the overriding skill that was required.
"Now it's the other way around as increasingly the aircraft we operate, while they don't exactly fly themselves, they have been designed to be much easier to fly; it is operating them that is much harder. What we need are people who can fly the aircraft without having to worry too much so they can devote more time to working the systems such as weapons or defensive aids or whatever it might be.
"However, you will always need to be a pilot and that is where EFT comes in and that is benefit of having a very basic aircraft to learn in. There will always be times when you need to go back to those skills and for that reason I don't think we will ever move away from EFT completely.
"Working here with EFT is one of the most challenging roles I've had," says the unit's new Chief Instructor, Wg Cdr Martin Adcock, himself a very experienced pilot from the Chinook force. "Taking someone off the street, as it were, who has never flown before and instructing them to a level where they are flying solo formation sorties and then assessing and understanding their cognitive and motor function skills so that a decision can be made as to their suitability for further training is a huge challenge.
"Flying an aircraft is one thing, but all that does is get you to the table where everyone meets to decide where their career will lie - and that is why there is such an emphasis on 1 EFTS getting it right when it comes to assessing capacity, situational awareness, resource management and some of those more objective elements."
This, naturally, isn't as clear cut as it sounds and, as we alluded to earlier, the need to fulfil certain manning requirements also plays a big part when it comes to deciding where those students who have succeeded at 1 EFTS will go next. Students are assessed after 30 hours of their 55 hour course - essentially to see whether they are capable of flying an aircraft - but it is the 25 hours which follows which is where the course is ramped up ahead of the streaming decisions at its conclusion.
"Those 25 hours is where students can make, or break, their name," says Martin, "it is there that they will forge their career and to some extent which cockpit they will end up in. However, we do have to base that against the slots that need filling in the year ahead and where resources are required."
Indeed, it is no longer true to say that everyone who joins the Royal Air Force as pilot necessarily wants to end up in a fast jet, and Martin confirms that when the streaming boards meet you can often see that students are requesting rotary or multi-engine. Many of the students have got their prospective careers completely mapped out, and they can see the value of sitting in a helicopter in Afghanistan or operating a transport aircraft. While service needs have to be considered, a huge amount of work goes in to trying to meet the aspirations of the student and actually placing them where they have indicated that they want to go, assuming of course that slots are available and that their abilities meet their aspiration.
"One of the things I want us to get across from Bill's display season this year is that actually we almost can't recruit enough pilots," says Wg Cdr Adcock. "The message is that this (the Tutor) is the elementary training platform for all three services and you could be flying it within a few weeks of graduation from Initial Officer Training. It is a capable platform and can lead on to very exciting times ahead. The door is open for recruitment."
It was encouraging to hear at Cranwell that 1 EFTS is hoping to confirm some ground support for Bill Ramsey's display this season (more of which in a future GAR feature), the aim of which is to spread the word with regard to elementary pilot training. As one instructor said to us, "it's an easy sell," and, having spent a day with 1 EFTS I'm inclined to agree.
It's all too easy to fall in to the trap of concentrating on the likes of Typhoon, Harrier, Chinook, C-17 and Hercules and ignoring the Tutor - particularly from an airshow perspective. But anyone who wants to fly in the military, be it with the Royal Air Force, Army Air Corps or Royal Navy, and regardless of what they end up flying, will come through the 1 EFTS syllabus. In many ways it is there that the future of the United Kingdom's air power is shaped, and a vast array of experience is brought to bear upon the aircrew that will represent our military for years to come. As I said at the beginning, our EFT is the envy of many and quite frankly we should be proud that we have it.
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