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Posted by Alan Morton
on 12/18/2007, 4:36 pm, in reply to "PFF"
75.83.113.51
The Pathfinder were elite squadrons in RAF Bomber Command, during World War II. They located and marked targets with flares, which a main bomber force could aim at, increasing the accuracy of their bombing. While the majority of Pathfinder squadrons and personnel were from the Royal Air Force, the group also included many from the air forces of other Commonwealth countries.
At the start of the war Bomber command made many daylight raids but the losses incurred from lack of escorting fighters when operating over Europe led them to switch the majority of their bombing missions to nighttime. This reduced losses, but made identifying and then hitting a target accurately very difficult. To reduce this problem Pathfinder squadrons were created.
The creation of the Pathfinder force was a source of one of the bitterest arguments of the Second World War. Initially the brainchild of Group Captain S O Bufton (a staff officer for whom Bomber Command's chief Arthur "Bomber" Harris had special contempt), Harris thought an elite would breed rivalry and jealousy, and have an adverse effect on morale. Sir Henry Tizard, advisor and one of the chief scientists supporting the war effort, said, however, "I do not think the formation of a first XV at rugby union makes little boys play any less enthusiastically."
Harris, however was forced to accept the idea. In order to minimise any adverse effects, Harris decided that every Group would have its own pathfinders, but again a bitter argument ensued, and eventually Harris lost and a separate group was formed: 8 Group, commanded by an Australian officer, Don Bennett, who was very highly-regarded within the RAF.[1] However, Bennett was not the first choice — Harris opposed the first choice of the Air Ministry, Basil Embry, the dashing young leader of 2 Group.
The Force was initially formed in August 1942 by creaming the best Squadrons from the existing Bomber Command Groups to make up the 'Pathfinder Force' (PFF), a tactic that understandably did not go down too well with the Group Commanders. Pathfinder Force (PFF) initially had no better tools than the rest of Bomber Command, flying its fair share of Stirlings, Halifaxes, Lancasters and Wellingtons. When new aircraft, such as the De Havilland Mosquito became available, PFF got the first ones, and then made good use of them by equipping them with ever more sophisticated electronic equipment, such as Oboe, a highly accurate radio navigation and bombing aid.
The United States Army Air Forces operated a similar force within the Eighth Air Force for "blind-bombing" through overcast on daylight missions using H2X radar-equipped bombers, for which it also used the terms "Pathfinder" and "PFF".
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