The Cream of the Crop: Canadian Aircrew, 1939-1945

Dean F. Oliver is a postdoctoral fellow at the Norman Paterson School of
International Affairs.

This thoroughly researched and original study is a major contribution to
the literature of Canada’s air force during World War II. Its dense,
scholarly chapters will probably not appeal to a popular audience, but
its expert analysis and balanced judgments make The Cream of the Crop
essential reading for professional historians and military aviation
specialists with an interest in either the air force or the period.

English’s starting point—whether Canadian aircrew really were, as
many contemporaries and subsequent pundits claimed, the “cream of the
crop” of Canada’s military manpower—leads to a fascinating and
much broader discussion of human-resources management in wartime.
Encompassing the selection, training, and employment of aircrew, the
book also covers some of the most contested and controversial ground in
recent writing on the conflict: the debate over cowardice and the
now-infamous official phrase “Lack of Moral Fibre” (LMF). The
chapter that focuses on the relationship between air force manpower
policies and the conscription crisis, while it is the weakest in the
book, nonetheless adds considerably to our understanding of the armed
forces’ delicate personnel predicament in the summer and fall of 1944.

The book’s narrow title, in fact, offers no hint of the breadth or
sophistication of its argument. Morale, leadership, civil–military
relations, Canadian sovereignty, psychology, and psychiatry are all
assessed, and only rarely does the discussion disappoint. English’s
depiction of the role of “technocratic elites” is one such weak
link; his contentions regarding Ottawa’s assertions of Canadian
sovereignty through, for example, its LMF policy, are another. Neither
flaw, however, overshadows the work’s overall excellence.

His conclusions—that the RCAF performed stupendous feats despite a
litany of personnel, training, and organizational deficiencies; that the
lessons of history are critical in framing adequate personnel policies;
and that the human element, not technology or doctrine, is the vital
ingredient in waging war—might appear trite, even superficial, at
first glance, but a careful reading of this book leaves no such
impression. English makes a complex and challenging argument.