LMF
Sir: The term 'Lacking Moral Fibre' (Let- ters, 19 January) was attached by the RAF to those aircrew who could no longer face operational flying. I came across it in documents I read in the immediate post- war RAF (1945-48) and heard many stories about it from veterans. There was a lot of folklore circulating about it and about many other things — much of it inaccurate (as I stamped out the library copy of The Virgin and the Gypsy to an elderly Pay Accounts Sergeant, he told me about the days when its author sought anonymity in the RAF under a pseudonym). However, LMF was not for jests. One Corporal I knew had served at the place (I think it was Eastcote) where the LMF men were broken. He described them arriving as Flight Sergeants and Warrant Officers, with ribbons and wings and a few hours later being Aircraftsmen (2nd class) work- ing in the tin room (scrubbing latrines was infinitely preferable to the tin room). Such men were now marked for a hard time. According to the stories, halfway through the tour of 30 operational flights was the danger time; or, alternatively, the first flight of a second tour, particularly if the rest period had been on dangerous instructional duties. You were lost if the rest of the crew did not carry you through — literally in some cases, when a man would be carried out to the plane. Once the 17th flight was over, everything changed — 17 was the magic number I heard repeated time and again. The re- maining 13 operations were said to be easy.
J. P. Morris
88 Ridgmount Gardens, London WC1
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