Role of the RAF in second world war Essay Example for Free

Role of the RAF in second world war Essay You ask, What is our policy? I will say; It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. 1 The Allied air forces based in Great Britain had numerous tactical advantages over the Luftwaffe. These included the use of anti-aircraft guns, the home field advantage, preference in mission profiles, slight technological superiority, and the use of land-based radar. Ground-based anti-aircraft fire from friendly allied units provided support for allied fighter and caused another threat for Luftwaffe bombers. A statement issued by the Air Ministry on September 15, 1940 stated that four enemy aircraft were shot down by anti-aircraft fire by 2000 hours. 2 Friendly anti-aircraft units provided an extra threat for the Luftwaffe, gave direct assistance to the Royal Air Force and were a psychological disadvantage for the Luftwaffe. When Allied fighter pilots were shot down during air battles, they had the ability to either eject or crash in friendly territory where local residents were willing to help the pilots return to action; Luftwaffe pilots who were shot down were most likely done flying for the duration of the war. In August of 1940, the ratio of destroyed planes to pilots reported Missing in Action was 49. 14:1. The same ratio for the Luftwaffe during August of 1940 was 1:1. 39. 3 This is the combat equivalent to home field advantage. The Allied pilots were familiar with the terrain, cities and countryside so that if they were forced to bail out, the chances of them returning to combat were much higher than Luftwaffe pilots. The Luftwaffe had to worry about one more problem that was hardly bothering allied air forces. The high Luftwaffe casualties in comparison to allied forces were a large advantage for the Royal Air Force and its allies. The only objective for scrambled Allied fighter pilots was to intercept inbound Luftwaffe air raids while the Luftwaffe fighters had to stay with the bombers to provide escort. This gave the Allied fighters much more freedom in terms of the engagement and allowed the Royal Air Force to dictate the engagement. The Luftwaffe fighter pilots were bound by a number of other similar problems also. For example, a dogfight uses a lot of fuel as fighters raise their speeds, roll, and climb. Fuel was something that the Luftwaffe fighter aircraft simply did not have enough of as they had to fly to Britain, engage the Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft and still reserve enough fuel for the flight home, keeping in mind running out of fuel would result in the Luftwaffe pilots being captured as they would be over British soil if they were to eject. The RAF did not have this problem because they could return to their airfield as soon as they reached bingo fuel (the state at which there is only enough fuel to return to base with a small reserve to orbit). This gave the Allies a significant tactical advantage; they forced the Luftwaffe to react to their actions as soon as they reacted initially with a scramble. There is no armed force that wants to react to another and the Luftwaffe was no exception. This is simply because it gives the other armed force a tactical advantage. The Royal Air Force and her allies also had a slight performance advantage over the Luftwaffe on an objective to objective basis. There are two major classifications of fixed-wing combat aircraft: the fighter and the bomber. Due to the differences between the classes, which are caused by their role, some aircraft are better at specific targets than others. This was no exception during World War II or the Battle of Britain. During the Battle of Britain, Hurricanes, for the most part, were tasked to intercept the inbound bombers. The Hurricane was a very efficient design for intercepting bombers as it sacrificed speed for heavier armaments. 4 The Hawker Hurricane MkIs maximum speed of 521 km/h was enough to intercept any bomber in the Luftwaffes inventory, the fastest of which being the Junker Ju88A/D/H/S/T and the Dornier Do215 which both reached speeds of 470 km/h. The Hawker Hurricane also had eight . 303 machine guns that were beneficial for tearing up Luftwaffe bombers. 5 However, because very few bombers can hold defend themselves against a fighter, they are usually escorted by fighter aircraft. In the case of the Battle of Britain, it was usually the dangerous Messerschmitt Me109 that performed the role of sortie escort. Unlike the Hawker Hurricane, the Me109E1 was a fighter aircraft, designed to kill other fighter aircraft. This meant that it had a faster maximum speed of 560 km/h, which was more than enough to engage the Hurricane. 6 To counter this threat, the Royal Air Force deployed the Supermarine Spitfire. The early Supermarine Spitfire Mk1 was the Royal Air Forces answer to the Messerschmitt Me109. With a maximum airspeed of 594 km/h, the Spitfire Mk1 had a slight speed advantage of approximately 34 km/h. 7 In terms of weaponry, the Spitfire Mk1 had eight . 303 machine guns (which is equivalent to 7. 6962mm) compared to the Me109Es two 7. 92mm machine guns and two 20mm cannons; However, Me109 pilots did not have to worry about fire convergence for their 7. 92mm guns as they were located in the upper fuselage8. The largest advantage the Spitfires and Hurricanes had was that they simply out-turned Luftwaffe fighters. According to Douglas Bader, a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force, the Spitfire and the Hurricane both had smaller turning radiuses than the Luftwaffe fighters did9. Therefore, in order to keep out of an enemy gun sight, RAF pilots simply had to turn hard. If the Luftwaffe pilots tried to follow, the RAF pilot would be behind them after a couple of full turns. In March 1942, the Luftwaffe began flying the Focke-Wulf FW190 which did have significant performance advantages over the Spitfire Mk1 and Hurricane; However the Royal Air Force quickly answered by creating Supermarine Spitfire IXA which was the equivalent to the FW190i. The only other aircraft that outperformed the Royal Aircraft fighters was the Messerschmitt Me262; however it was introduced too late in the campaign to make a significant difference. 10 These performance advantages allowed the Royal Air Force to control the engagement and forced the Luftwaffe to react. One advantage that can not be overlooked in any war or conflict, World War II being no exception, is the element of training soldiers have been given. The Allies recognised this and created the British Commonwealth Air Training Program (BCATP). The British Commonwealth Air Training Program was under the control of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and was a huge Canadian contribution to World War II and the Battle of Britain. Costing Canada $2 billion11 it trained 50,000 pilots, 25,000 navigators and 57,000 other aircrew members12. After the creation of the British Commonwealth Air Training Program, Royal Air Force pilots had a significant training advantage over the Luftwaffe pilots. The most significant advantage the Royal Air Force had was their Early Warning capabilities. The Royal Air Force made use of radar. Invented by Robert Watson-Watt, it allowed the Royal Air Force to find the speed and vector of inbound air raids by bouncing radio waves off airborne objects. 13 With a chain of radar stations along the southeast portion of England,14 it was very difficult, if possible at all, for the Luftwaffe to enter British airspace without being met by Royal Air Force fighter aircraft. This allowed the pilots in the Royal Air Force to stay in the air longer because they no longer had to hunt for the Luftwaffe aircraft; 15 they were given specific bearings based on intelligence gathered from the radar stations. This also made a reduction in Combat Air Patrols (CAP) possible because the RAF knew when and where the Luftwaffe bombers were. This allowed readiness to be increased as planes could wait as long as necessary at an airfield with a full loadout and full of fuel until it was most efficient to attack the inbound raid. The most important advantage of radar was depriving the Luftwaffe of the element of surprise, always a very important aspect of war. With the Luftwaffe lacking the element of surprise, yet another tactical advantage was handed to the Royal Air Force. The Luftwaffe had to fight the Battle of Britain with many disadvantages. These disadvantages included the Royal Air Forces training, the Royal Air Forces performance advantages, and having to fight away from home on another countrys ground. All of these factors led to the Luftwaffes defeat during the Battle of Britain, which ended officially on October 31, 1940. 16 However, combat has its price. Mary Kay Ash was correct in saying, People fail forward to success. 17 Endnotes18man, 1 Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), 1940 during his first address as the Prime Minister of Britain.2 Battle of Britain, www. spartacus. schoolnet. co. uk/2WWbritainB. htm, May 29, 2004. 3 Truman, C. , The Battle of Britain, www. historylearningsite. co. uk/battle_of_britain_statistics. htm, May 25, 2004. 4 Harrison, Nigel Jackson. Andy, The Battle of Britain, www. battle-of-britain. com, May 25, 2004. 5 Chris Chant, Aircraft of WWII (Etobicoke, Ontario: Prospero Books, 1999), p. 110, 161, 197. 6 Ibid. p. 299 7 Ibid. p. 222 8 Ibid. 9 Battle of Britain, www. spartacus. schoolnet. co. uk/2WWbritainB. htm, May 29, 2004.i After the war, the Royal Air Force released the Supermarine Spitfire MkIXB which was superior to the Focke-Wulf FW190. 10 Battle of Britain, www. spartacus. schoolnet. co. uk/2WWbritainB. htm, May 29, 2004. 11 Bolotta ,Angelo et al. Canada: Face of a Nation (Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing Company, 2000) p. 167 12 Ibid. 13 Truman, C. , Radar and the Battle of Britain, www. historylearningsite. co. uk/radar_and_the_battle_of_britain. htm. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 16 DeltaWeb International, www. raf. mod. uk/bob1940/bobhome.html, April 16, 2004. 17. The Quotations Page, www. quotationspage. com, May 29, 2004. Bibliography 1. Bracken, Robert. Spitfire II. Erin, Ontario: Boston Mills Press, 1999. 2. Chant, Chris. Aircraft of WWII. Etobicoke, Ontario: Prospero Books, 1999. 3. Delta Web International Ltd. www. raf. mod. uk/bob1940/bobhome. html, April 16, 2004. 4. Gurney, Gene, Major, USAF. The War in the Air. New York: Bonanza, 1962. 5. Harrison, Nigel Jackson, Andy. www. battle-of-britain. com, May 24, 2004. 6. Imperial War Museum. www. iwm.org. uk/online/battleofbritain/intro. April 20, 2004. 7. Meyer, Corky. The Best WWII Fighter. Flight Journal, August 2003, p. 27-36. 8. Moncur, Michael et al. The Quotations Page, www. quotationspage. com, May 30, 2004. 9. Simkin, John. The Battle of Britain, www. spartacus. schoolnet. co. uk/2WWbritainB. htm, May 29, 2004. 10. Truman. www. historylearningsite. co. uk/radar_and_the_battle_of_britain. htm, May24, 2004. 11. Truman, C. www. historylearningsite. co. uk/battle_of_britain_statistics. htm, May 24, 2004.

I Have the Moral Character to be a Teacher :: Teaching Education Essays

I Have the Moral Character to be a Teacher I was inspired to become a teacher for many reasons. Teaching will be a self-fulfilling career. It would give me the opportunity to help my community and have a moral and ethical impact on the students of this area. Also, I desire to be with my children as much as possible, and a teaching profession fits that mold. A teaching profession would be rewarding because it would allow me to fulfill many personal goals, including working with the youth of the area and spending time with my family. For many years I have volunteered with the Boys Scouts of America. Doing this is one of my passions, but recent jobs I have had did not allowed much time for volunteering. A teacher’s schedule would allow me to be able to serve this organization by volunteering as an Aquatics Instructor, teaching life-saving skills. My other passion is my family. Spending time with my children is the best way to create life-long memories. However, it is difficult to spend time with my family and scho ol-age children when our schedules are not alike. As a teacher, I would be able to spend more quality time with my children and help them after school with homework. In addition to meeting these personal goals, teaching would allow me to reach out to area students and help them build character and acquire knowledge. The classroom is a complex society. In each room, there must be an atmosphere in which students of all backgrounds can learn. By being a constructivist one can combine the elements of essentialism, progressivism, behaviorism, perennialism, and existentialism to form a successful teaching philosophy and therefore a successful classroom. Below, I will discuss how these ideas can be combined for success. As essentialism states, the teacher needs to have control in the instruction of the classroom. Lecturing and supervising the improvement of skills are great ways to teach materials. A case in point here shows one of the teaching fundamentals, of the core subjects reading, writing, math, and nature sciences. This give s you the intellectual discipline to solve problems that involve complex ideas. In progressivism, students have more of a democratic voice in the learning process. Although the teacher will be the facilitator of the process, by using a cooperative learning activity the students are designing there own education and are guided in a direction by the teacher.

Modern Management 4_PD

The job description is a list of particular activities or tasks an employee should undertake in an organization under the particular position he/she holds.   It is a sort of a formal statement and is highly specific to an employee in order to avoid creating confusion.   If a job description is clear, the employee can center on his goals within the organization and can succeed.   The organization would also become more efficient.   An individual would have to perform certain tasks or make sure that another person executes those tasks. The job description helps the employees to bring about certain levels in performance and act as a guide to help them achieve their goals.   The manager of the organization delegates the job description so that each and every employee can perform their activities.   The activities should be distributed in such a manner that efficiency and effectiveness of the employee is brought about. The process of allocating the work and doing the job analysis varies from time to time and depends on several factors including the aims and objectives of the organization and the conditions prevailing.   There may be three issues related to responsibility, namely, distributing the job activities, being responsible and clarifying the job activities of the managers.   The process of job analysis involves several processes including:- 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   determining the aims and objectives of the organization 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   determine the jobs to be performed to achieve these objectives 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   accumulating the available job descriptions 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   preparing the job analysis questionnaire (has the job title, summary, duties to be performed, time allocations, relationships with others in the organization, educational qualifications required, etc) 5.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   any other issues have to be addressed accordingly 6.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Additional activities in case the data gaps are still present such as interview questionnaire, performance appraisals, organizational surveys, discussions, etc. 7.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   A final job description is then prepared 8.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The employees should be made more responsible for performing their duties The outbreak of the internet has made mangers to focus heavily on this segment and make job descriptions to suit these positions.   The data regarding various organizational functions is specifically analyzed and handled using programs.   One of the main duties of an information analyst is to design and create new programs that can be custom-made to suit the end-user.   The internet is having a major role in modifying the job descriptions as more efficient ways of helping the employees to achieve the objectives of the organization are discovered.   The programmers are concentrating on the internet rather than programming to ensure that their information systems are adjusted to suit current trend. This technology has permitted the employees to interact more closely with the clients.   For an organization to succeed, high connectivity internet along with adequate broadband capabilities is required.   The organizational information should be available to the clients in order to bring about success.   The management could also use the internet to make money (as internet business is a trend nowadays).   It is very important that an organization concentrates on the internet, as it could play a major role in bringing about success of the organization. Organizational chart is the manner in which the work of the company or organization is distributed to bring about efficiency and effectiveness.   The matrix organizations are the modifications of the traditional organizational setup to bring about certain changes that would enable completion of certain activities.   The changing of the organizational chart to suit the specific needs is known as project organizations’. The organization I belong to has 4 divisions, namely, the clinical trials department, the data management department, the biochemical department and the bioengineering department.   Each of these departments would be having two phases, namely, the resources allocation phase and the market phase, along with support to the projects that exist within the organization.   Each project would have a production unit, engineering and research unit, logistics unit, HR unit and the accounts and administration unit.   These units could be further divided into project A, B, C, D, etc. Each of these projects has an in-charge manager.   The work would usually flow or begin from the accounts unit (For allocations of resources), human resource unit, logistics units, engineering and research unit (for development of technology) and finally into the production unit.   Once a particular project is completed, then the organization would get back to the traditional chart in which each of the units are not subdivided as per the projects existing. Having such a structural organizational chart has several benefits and limitations.   The ability to manage the workflow, client satisfaction levels, development time, costs, quality, etc, can easily be controlled.   However, organizational charts can bring about difficulty in operations and conflicts in handling day to day issues.   Sometimes, it may be very difficult to manage such an organization.   The organization should be interested in changing the present traditional organizational setup into a matrix model to suit the changing needs which may be short-term. The organization would be having several departments as each of tense departments would be under a particular manager.   Each of these managers would be having several units and each of these units would be contributing to a particular project.   Each of these projects would be sharing some of the fixed log-term resources with another project. In my organization, all the five units exist, namely the accounts unit, personal unit, logistics unit and the production unit are existent.   Wrigley’s chewing gum brought about lot of changes the structure of the organization, and modifications were observed to all the units.   These departments help to eliminate or add certain activities exercised by the organization.   The flow of work in an organization can be brought about one factor that lies before one of these criteria. The Wrigley’s experience is a situation in which all the five units or levels are present and have to be managed to ensure the proper flow of work.   The extent of success achieved by one product or services various depending on several factors which may be the motivational levels of the staff, incentives provided, proper logistic management, conducting adequate amount of research and finally creating the product or service. References: Cresto, S. C. and Cresto, S. T. (2006). Chapter 3: Organianl aChange and Stress, Modern Management, (10th ed), New Jersey: Upper Saddle River, pp. 299-322.      

The Origins of a Notochord

A notochord is often described as a primitive backbone. The word notochord comes from the  Greek words  notos  (back) and  chorde  (cord).  It is a rigid, cartilaginous rod that is present at some stage of development in all chordates. Some organisms, like African lungfish, tadpoles, and sturgeon,  retain a post-embryonic notochord.  The notochord is formed during gastrulation (an early phase in the development of most animals) and lies along the axis from the head to the tail. Notochord research has played an important role in scientists understanding the development of animals  central nervous system.   Notochord Structure Notochords provide a rigid, yet flexible structure that enables muscle attachment, which is believed to be advantageous both for individual development and evolution. It is made from a material that is similar to cartilage, the tissue you find at the tip of your nose and a sharks  cartilaginous skeleton. Notochord Development The development of the notochord is known as notogenesis. In some chordates, the notochord is present as a rod of cells that lies beneath and parallel the nerve cord, giving it support. Some animals, like tunicates or sea squirts, have a notochord during their larval stage. In vertebrates, the notochord is typically present only in the embryo stage.