Editing Battle of Britain (section)

===Pilots===
[[File:Group Captain A G Malan WWII IWM CH 12661.jpg|thumb|upright|[[South Africa]]n [[Adolph Malan|Adolph "Sailor" Malan]] led [[No. 74 Squadron RAF]] and was, at the time, the RAF's leading ace]]

Before the war, the RAF's processes for selecting potential candidates were opened to men of all social classes through the creation in 1936 of the [[RAF Volunteer Reserve]], which "...&nbsp;was designed to appeal, to&nbsp;... young men&nbsp;... without any class distinctions&nbsp;..."<ref>{{harvnb|Terraine|1985|pp=44–45}}</ref> The older squadrons of the [[Royal Auxiliary Air Force]] did retain some of their upper-class exclusiveness,<ref>{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|p=86}}</ref> but their numbers were soon swamped by the newcomers of the RAFVR; by 1 September 1939, 6,646 pilots had been trained through the RAFVR.<ref>{{harvnb|Terraine|1985|p=44}}</ref>

By mid-1940, there were about 9,000 pilots in the RAF to man about 5,000 aircraft, most of which were bombers.{{Citation needed|date=February 2009}} Fighter Command was never short of pilots, but the problem of finding sufficient numbers of {{Em|fully trained}} fighter pilots became acute by mid-August 1940.<ref>{{harvnb|Bishop|1968|pp=85–87}}</ref> <!--This section needs to be reassessed and properly cited{{snd}} At all times, new pilots had "almost no chance at all" of surviving their first five [[sortie]]s because of inexperience, because they received the most-damaged and least-reliable planes, and because they were likely to be their formations' "[[tail-end charlie]]"s and thus most vulnerable. For the survivors, the odds of survival rose during the next 15 sorties as their skill and confidence grew. After 20 the odds again decreased to zero.<ref>{{harvnb|Korda|2010|p=86–87}}</ref>--> With aircraft production running at 300 planes each week, only 200 pilots were trained in the same period. In addition, more pilots were allocated to squadrons than there were aircraft, as this allowed squadrons to maintain operational strength despite casualties and still provide for pilot leave.<ref name="Bungay 2000, p. 370">{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|p=370}}</ref> Another factor was that only about 30% of the 9,000 pilots were assigned to operational squadrons; 20% of the pilots were involved in conducting pilot training, and a further 20% were undergoing further instruction, like those [[List of British Commonwealth Air Training Plan facilities in Canada|offered in Canada]] and in [[Southern Rhodesia]] to the Commonwealth trainees, although already qualified. The rest were assigned to staff positions, since RAF policy dictated that only pilots could make many staff and operational command decisions, even in engineering matters. At the height of the fighting, and despite Churchill's insistence, only 30 pilots were released to the front line from administrative duties.<ref name="Ponting, 1940: Myth and reality, p.130">{{harvnb|Ponting|1991|p=130}}</ref><ref group=nb>The pilots occupying these administrative positions included such officers as Dowding, Park and Leigh-Mallory and the numbers actually fit to serve in front line fighter squadrons are open to question.</ref>

For these reasons, and the permanent loss of 435 pilots during the Battle of France alone<ref name="short hist 99">[http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/F21D57C4_9913_5321_BB9830F0BB762B4E.pdf "A Short History of the Royal Air Force," pp. 99–100.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110806021956/http://www.raf.mod.uk/rafcms/mediafiles/F21D57C4_9913_5321_BB9830F0BB762B4E.pdf |date=6 August 2011 }} ''RAF''.. Retrieved: 10 July 2011.</ref> along with many more wounded, and others lost [[Battle of Norway|in Norway]], the RAF had fewer experienced pilots at the start of the Battle of Britain than the Luftwaffe. It was the lack of trained pilots in the fighting squadrons, rather than the [[Minister of Aircraft Production|lack of aircraft]], that became the greatest concern for Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command. Drawing from regular RAF forces, the Auxiliary Air Force and the [[Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve|Volunteer Reserve]], the British were able to muster some 1,103 fighter pilots on 1 July. Replacement pilots, with little flight training and often no gunnery training, suffered high casualty rates, exacerbating the problem.<ref name="Bungay 2000, p. 260.">{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|p=260}}</ref>

The Luftwaffe, on the other hand, were able to muster a large number (1,450) of experienced fighter pilots.<ref name="Ponting, 1940: Myth and reality, p.130"/> Drawing from a cadre of Spanish Civil War veterans, these pilots already had comprehensive courses in aerial gunnery and instructions in tactics suited for fighter-versus-fighter combat.<ref name="Bungay 2000, p. 259.">{{harvnb|Bungay|2000|p=259}}</ref> Training manuals discouraged heroism, stressing the importance of attacking only when the odds were in the pilot's favour. Despite the high levels of experience, German fighter formations did not provide a sufficient reserve of pilots to allow for losses and leave,<ref name="Bungay 2000, p. 370"/> and the Luftwaffe was unable to produce enough pilots to prevent a decline in operational strength as the battle progressed.