The Crew - Flight Engineer
It took a team to fly a bomber in WWII. Each man aboard had a job to do and veterans stress the degree to which they not only relied on one another but respected one another as professionals. While the pilot was the team captain, his closest assistant in controlling the aircraft was the flight engineer. Above a flight engineer signals the ground crew to start #3 engine. IWM film material in the public domain. In early 1942, the RAF concluded that they could not afford to have two pilots aboard an aircraft. It took too long and cost too much to train a pilot (up to two and a half years) to allow half of them to sit around idle during operations in which they might get killed. The second pilot on a bomber was effectively waiting for the first pilot to be killed or too severely injured to fly, but might die in the process himself, without ever contributing to the war effort. The position of "Second Pilot" (or co-pilot in American parlance) was therefore eliminated....