Royal Observer Corps Recruitment
We have now started recruiting
for the peacetime Royal Observe Corps. We are aiming at a strength
of about 28,500 spare-time officers and observers and a small
number of whole-time officers. The corps will be organised much as
in the war and will remain under the operational control of the
Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Fighter Command. It is hoped that
training can begin on 1st January, 1947. To begin with we are
limiting recruiting to the many members of the corps who, on
stand-down, said they were ready to join the corps in peacetime:
they already know the new conditions of service. We expect to open
recruiting later to others who have served in the R.O.C. and
possibly to men and women who have had no previous service in the
corps. Recruits sign on for three years. They will be given small
annual grants with certain additions for travelling expenses and
for passing proficiency tests. The training of the corps will
largely be in recognising, reporting and plotting aircraft. The
corps achieved a very high standard in this work during the war
and we are sure that it will maintain this standard in the future.
Geoffrey
de Freitas, Secretary of State for Air, 21 November 1946, Hansard
A variety of recruitment methods were used for the Corps, but probably most recruits came from word-of-mouth. Occasionally there were newspaper adverts, and also the ROC was sometimes included in recruitment materials for the other services.
