Building 103 (Link Trainer)

Details

LAUNTON

1714/0/10024 A421 (SE) 01-DEC-05 Technical Site, RAF Bicester Building 103 (Link Trainer)

GV II Link Trainer building. By the Air Ministry's Directorate of Works and Buildings, to drawing number 6414/37. Flemish bond brick with steel casements and flat reinforced concrete roof.
PLAN: rectangular plan, with two rooms for the accommodation of Link Trainers (see below). West elevation has two steel-framed windows flanked by outer doors.
INTERIOR: original doors and joinery.

HISTORY: The Technical Site at Bicester, separated from the Domestic Site, still has many of the original buildings, mostly of 1926 but with others added during successive phases of the 1930's Expansion Period. The Link trainer, first introduced to Britain in 1936, provided a cheap method of training pilots.

The Link trainer provided a cheaper alternative for training pilots in instrument flying than flying actual aircraft. The trainer was invented by in 1929 by Edwin Link, an American organ manufacturer, and it was first introduced into the UK in 1936 when a company called JVW Ltd. was set up at Aylesbury to handle sales, installations and maintenance. The wartime Link trainer comprised a fuselage approximately 10ft long of timber frame construction and covered with plywood or fabric. Powerful bellows enabled the device to simulate basic flying movements similar to pitching, banking and turning of a real aircraft. Early machines had wings, tailplane and fin with their corresponding control surfaces. The cockpit closely resembled a typical single-engined aircraft of the period, with the usual six basic instruments plus compass, radio, rudder pedals and control column. Any changes in flight attitude were shown by the instruments as well as the relevant control surfaces.

Connections led from the trainer to an instructor's desk where a small three-wheeled trolley called a 'tracking crab' (automatic recorder) reacted to time and rate of movement of the fuselage. One wheel functioned as an pen recorder and traced an accurate course onto a map of the countryside over which the 'pilot' was supposed to be flying. The desk also had a duplicate set of aircraft instruments enabling him to assess the pilot's flying ability (see Flight, 28.10.1937: 416-9).

At the beginning of the Second World War, because of the fear of bombing raids on our cities, cinemas and theatres were shut. The companies who had relied on supplying theatre equipment had to seek alternative work. The firm of Fitups Ltd. of Manchester (later to become Watts & Corry Ltd.) was in 1940 operating with the north of England branch of Strand Electric (later to become Rank Strand Electric). The staff of these two firms included joiners, scenic artists, draughtsmen, engineers and electricians. They were versatile in their approach at finding suitable work. Representatives were sent to the Air Ministry to try and obtain camouflage work. This was not available, but a contract was won for the design and manufacture of painted scenic cycloramas for Link trainers. The target screen at Crail (Scotland) is part of the extensive Scheduled Ancient Monument on that exceptionally well-preserved Second World War airfield.

This building, one of the permanent standard designs produced by the Air Ministry in the late 1930s, has special importance for its relationship to RAF Bicester's wartime function as a training centre for Bomber Command and this uniquely well-preserved group of both phases of the inter-war expansion of the RAF. It faces the main axial route through the technical site.

Bicester is the best-preserved of the bomber bases constructed as the principal arm of Sir Hugh Trenchard's expansion of the RAF from 1923, which was based on the philosophy of offensive deterrence. It retains, better than any other military airbase in Britain, the layout and fabric relating to both pre-1930s military aviation and the development of Britain's strategic bomber force - and the manner in which its expansion reflected domestic political pressures as well as events on the world stage - in the period up to 1939. It was this policy of offensive deterrence that essentially dominated British air power and the RAF's existence as an independent arm of the military in the inter-war period, and continued to determine its shape and direction in the Second World War and afterwards during the Cold War. The grass flying field still survives with its 1939 boundaries largely intact, bounded by a group of bomb stores built in 1938/9 and airfield defences built in the early stages of the Second World War. For much of the Second World War RAF Bicester functioned as an Operational Training Unit, training Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders as well as British air crews for service in Bomber Command. These OTUs, of which Bicester now forms the premier surviving example, fulfilled the critical requirement of enabling bomber crews - once individual members had trained in flying, bombing, gunnery and navigation - to form and train as units.
For further historical details see Buildings Nos 79 and 137 (Type 'A' Hangars).

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

500288

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Francis, P, RAF Bicester, (1996)
Francis, P, British Military Airfield Architecture From Airships To The Jet Age, (1996)
Dobinson, C, Airfield Themes, (1997)

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