Dispersal Numbering

netcompsys wrote:

I am pretty sure that at Leconfield, during. the period 1944-1945, when it was a Bomber command airfield and my fathers squadron, 640 Sqn was in residence, that the dispersals were assigned to specific aircraft (Halifaxs) by squadron letter codes.

I think that there were 36 dispersals, and that although for a lot of that period only one squadron was based there, there were periods when there were two.
The initial establishment was for 26 crews which implies 26 aircraft

So I suspect that things were relatively fluid depending on the circumstances and the people would would have known what was where were probably mainly the SNCO's in charge of maintenance, refueling and bombing up

That is not to say that they didint have numbers as well to identify them for other purposes of course

It occurs to me as well that this example is for that of a 1944/45 bomber station and would not apply to airfield s serving other purposes at other times during and post war

I know I had seen this somewhere, thanks to TonyH
This is part of the Bomber Command State board for 4 Group which now hangs on a wall at RAFM Hendon and shows the state on 26 April 1945. 51 Sqn had transferred in from Snaith in mid April

Given that there were 36 dispersals, Leconfield must have become very busy as 640 Sqn had a Unit Establishment of 20 aircraft, with 25 on strength and 18 available for Ops,
and 51 had a UE of 20 with 32 on strength and 24 available for operations, so between 42 and 57 aircraft assigned to the airfield

No answer to the original question of course but it demonstrates the complexity of managing aircraft on the ground at that time

This now begs the question as to how big was a squadron. Given the different unit establishments and skipping onto "available for ops", there was a wide variation in reality. I laways thought a squadron was a fixed number, and had 12 in my head, but maybe that was a pre-war number. Also my impression of a USAAF bomb group was around 36 (3x12), if this was true many RAF sqaudron were nearly equivalent to a bomb group. This must have made airfield construction and particularly dispersals a bit hit and miss, to say the least.

This is not something I had looked at before but reading loads of squadron ORB's has painted a very different picture to my impressions but one that, in retrospect, makes more sense.

Thinking about Bomber Command airfields in particular ...

I have always believed that in late 1944 and in 1945 that the attrition rate for bomber command was falling, and that logically the production rate of replacement aircraft was increasing which may be behind the number of aircraft on charge exceeding the establishment

To follow up on something Peter said, my example above may not be a good one as 640 Sqn was swapping over from Halifax III to Halifax VI in March 1945 so that there may have been an element of duplication still in late April, difficult to know

From a mantenance and supply point of view, the discussion is possibly also complicated by the Bomber Command base inftrastucture so that 43 base, ie ( the 3rd 'base' in 4 Group) was HQed at Driffield and included both Leconfield and Lissett

Individual aircraft were identified by their allocated letter, so 26 max. In my reading of 640's ORB there is certainly no record of aircraft id'ed outside that range. We would need to look at the ORB's of the squadrons which show more than 26 aircraft on strength, as shown on the example photo above, to take that further. Tony was able to get good photos of all the group columns if we decide to persue that aspect of this discussion

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