Vic formation

The Vic formation is a formation devised for military aircraft and first used during World War I. It comprises three or sometimes more aircraft flying in close formation with the leader at the apex and the rest of the flight en echelon to left and right, the whole resembling the letter "V". The name is derived from the term for the letter V in the phonetic alphabet of the time. It is still in use today, though it has been superseded or replaced in some circumstances.

At the start of the First World War little thought had been given to the most efficient formations to use for military aircraft. Groups of fliers (drawn from the various nations Army or Navy) would fly in columns, or line ahead, as if they were troops of cavalry or flotillas of ships. This was soon found to be inefficient, for several reasons. First, the leaders were unable to communicate with their squadrons, and they with him, other than the vague instruction to follow the leader. Second, if they came under anti-aircraft fire from the ground, the flight would either all turn at once, scattering the formation, or they would follow the leader round a point, as horsemen or ships, maintaining cohesion but being exposed to fire on a fixed point. The remedy was to fly in a close V formation, allowing the aircraft to make a sudden 180 degree turn if fired upon, which would leave them flying out of danger with the formation intact, though with their positions in the formation reversed.

The formation also allowed the fliers to see each other and communicate by hand signals; it also allowed them to stay together in poor visibility or cloud. Later, when bomber and reconnaissance flights came under attack from fighter aircraft, the Vic proved to have good defensive characteristics; pilots, looking inwards to maintain formation could overlook each other for attackers, while their observer/rear gunners could use interlocking fire to protect each other.

The Vic was the basic flying formation adopted by every major air force; the French Air Force referred to it as the Chevron, while to the Germans it was the Kette. It remained the standard formation throughout the inter-war years and into World War II.

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