page_title: Hamish Mahaddie
section_title: No. 8 Group Headquarters Staff
hierarchical_section_title: Hamish Mahaddie / No. 8 Group Headquarters Staff
caption_attribution_description: English: RAF Bomber Command Mosquito Mk IVs of No. 105 Squadron at Marham, December 1942.
context_page_description: Group Captain Thomas Gilbert "Hamish" Mahaddie, DSO, DFC, AFC & Bar, FRAeS was a Scotsman who served in the Royal Air Force. As a youth he was selected for an apprentice program and was trained as an RAF ground crew "metal rigger". He had earned his wings and reached the rank of sergeant pilot by the outbreak of the Second World War. In his second tour he was selected to be a member of the newly formed "Pathfinder Force". At the end of his second combat tour he was brought onto Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett's Headquarter Staff in the position of “Group Training Inspector”. In this position he selected, recruited and trained aircrews to serve in the Pathfinder Force. Within the span of two years from the start of the war Mahaddie had risen in rank from sergeant to group captain. Following the war he continued to serve in the RAF until 1958. Out of the service he worked as an electronics consultant for the Armed Services, and as an aircraft consultant for the film industry. His most remarkable accomplishment in the film industry was the procurement of aircraft, crews and service personnel for the film Battle of Britain.
context_section_description: On 23 March 1943 Mahaddie was promoted to group captain and assigned to No. 8 (PFF) Group Headquarters. He was taken off operational flying and made "Group Training Inspector" for PFF commander Don Bennett. The quality of the aircrews the Pathfinder Force was receiving had fallen off markedly since the group's initial formation, with some Groups using the PFF as a means to ship out officers facing courtmartial and other problem crews. Bennett tasked Mahaddie with fixing the problem. He was on his own as to how he was to accomplish the finding of crews to replace the group's losses. He also had a hand in their training. The new role meant he would be recruiting crews for the Pathfinders from operational squadrons whose commanding officers were not particularly interested in having their best crews recruited. It was a job Mahaddie became notoriously successful at.
  As "Group Training Inspector" he regularly visited operational squadrons, ostensibly to lecture aircrews on the changing tactics and techniques employed by the Pathfinders. Before visiting a station, he would have already identified crews that he felt were candidates for the PFF. His small staff had reviewed the aiming point photographs shot from the aircraft on each mission. In recruiting aircrews Mahaddie was looking for accuracy and daring. The most critical part of a bombing mission was the bombing run. To drop accurately a bomber could not fly evasively. He had to fly straight and level over the target area till the bomb aimer called "bombs gone", then hold his line of flight another several seconds for the automatic photoflash and the aiming point picture taken by the night camera, all completed at the one point in the trip where search lights and antiaircraft fire were the most intense. Aircraft which had consistently dropped their bombs on the target were noted by his staff. Mahaddie would then call up the air base and ask for the name of the pilot of the aircraft.
  In Mahaddie's talks he stressed the importance of navigation to reach the target, the use of special equipment such as Gee, H2S and Oboe, and the methods being used to confuse and confound the air defenses over Germany. These were topics of great interest to the pilots. In his talk he would always include two example missions where the Pathfinders failed. In both cases it was Mahaddie who was the lead bomber and who had made the error. The first he called "Hamish's shame" and the second he called "Mahaddie's folly", and he would speak of them not only as a guide as what not to do, but as an encouragement for them to see that if he could make it in the Pathfinders, then perhaps they could too. He admitted later that he used his lecture tour as a pretext to get onto the airbase and meet the pilots he had already identified. In the evening he would visit the pubs the aircrews frequented, and speak with the pilots individually and privately. Then, if the pilot wished and his crew agreed, they would apply to be transferred to the Pathfinder Force. Next a certain amount of back and forth between the air wing commander and Mahaddie would ensue, but Mahaddie had the support he needed and would inevitably get the transfer secured. The crew would be sent to RAF Warboys and start their training as a pathfinder crew. Through this, and other techniques, Mahaddie recruited thousands of the most highly regarded Bomber Command aircrew to the Pathfinders.
  In 1944 Mahaddie and a number of other senior officers from Bomber Command were "seconded" to the Eighth Air Force to brief them on the navigational and directional techniques in use by the Pathfinder Force. Bomber Command also hoped to sway the Americans to join their efforts with those of Bomber Command in their night time attacks upon Germany. The Americans held faith in their Norden bombsight, and believed that daylight bombing was the only way to accurately strike at and destroy the target. Bomber Command believed in dropping a large concentration of bombs on the target to destroy it, made use of the cover of night to help protect their aircraft and used 
caption: Mosquitos of 105 Squadron making up a part of the Pathfinder Force in December, 1942
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