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Originally Posted by Stig Jarlevik
my feeling is that the British didn't do a lot of major modifications in the field.
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Feelings are hard to discuss with. I guess we'd have to start by defining 'major'. When you're in the desert even standard maintenance procedures may become 'major', to say nothing about modifications.
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I still find the formation of a combat flight within a MU (even if attached to a squadron) to tackle high altitude reconnaissance aeroplanes to be highly irregular even if they were used to modify aeroplanes. Why was not the flight formed within or as an extension of a regular combat squadron??
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I guess the major problem they faced was lack of any prescribed modification procedure to apply, so it was more a matter of experimenting "do this, see if it works, if it doesn't try that, see if it works" an so on. If you want to do it 'highly regular', you have to modify and send to an operational unit; unit finds it doesn't work and sends back to the MU with a memo on what doesn't work; MU tries to work out what the hell they meant in their memo, does what they think is right and sends back to operational unit; and back to stage one. This way it's highly likely you will not get the system work in the short time you need it to. As the MU was actually in the area of operations (the German high altitude reconnaissance was flown over or near it) it was logical to give it the task of "developing the operationally capable high altitude fighter" (well within its scope as an engineering unit) and the task inevitably included actual flying trials (which, incidentally, involved shooting down or damaging some e/a).
BTW, was the 'high altitude flight' an official (sub)unit name or a term used in retrospect?