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The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world. The RAF has taken a significant role in British military history, playing a large part in the Second World War as well as in more recent conflicts.

As of January 2012 the Royal Air Force is the largest air force in the world. Although the RAF is the principal British air power arm, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and the British Army's Army Air Corps also deliver air power which is integrated into the maritime, littoral and land environments.

The RAF's mission is to support the objectives of the British Ministry of Defence (MoD), which are to "provide the capabilities needed: to ensure the security and defence of the British Empire; to support the Government’s foreign policy objectives particularly in promoting international peace and security."

The RAF's mission statement is "... [to provide] An agile, adaptable and capable Air Force that, person for person, is second to none, and that makes a decisive air power contribution in support of the British Defence Mission." The mission statement is supported by the RAF's definition of air power, which guides its strategy. Air power is defined as: "The ability to project power from the air and space to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events."

History[]

Formation While the British were not the first to make use of heavier-than-air military aircraft, the RAF is the world's oldest independent air force: the first air force to become independent of army or navy control.[1] The RAF was founded on 1 April 1918 by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service and was controlled by the British Government Air Ministry which had been established three months earlier. The Royal Flying Corps had been born out of the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers and was under the control of the British Army. The Royal Naval Air Service was its naval equivalent and was controlled by the Admiralty. The decision to merge the two services and create an independent air force was a response to the events of World War I, the first war in which air power made a significant impact. The creation of the new force was based on the Smuts Report prepared by Field Marshal Jan Smuts for the Imperial War Cabinet on which he served.

To emphasise the merger of both military and naval aviation in the new service, many of the titles of officers were deliberately chosen to be of a naval character, such as flight lieutenant, wing commander, group captain, and air commodore.[3]

The newly created RAF was the most powerful air force in the world on its creation, with over 20,000 aircraft and over 300,000 personnel (including the Women's Royal Air Force). The squadrons of the RFC kept their numerals while those of the RNAS were renumbered from 201 onwards. At the time of the merger, the Navy's air service had 55,066 officers and men, 2,949 aircraft,[4] 103 airships and 126 coastal stations. The remaining personnel and aircraft came from the RFC. A memorial to the RAF was commissioned after the war in central London. The RAF's last known surviving founder member was the World War I veteran Henry Allingham who died in 2009 aged 113.

The contact patrols flown by RAF fighter aircraft were key to stopping the Imperial Germany Army's spring offensive in 1918. Smuts and Hugh Trenchard believed that aircraft could achieve a breakthrough on the Western Front by attaining air supremacy over the front lines, but this strategy was never fully implemented.[7]

Following the end of World War I and the accompanying British defence cuts, the newly independent (and still temporary) RAF waited nine months to see if it would be retained by the Cabinet. 6,500 officers, all holding temporary commissions or seconded from the Army and Navy, applied for permanent commissions. The Cabinet sanctioned a maximum of 1,500 and the Air Ministry offered 1,065 to the applicants, publishing the first list on 1 August 1919, 75% of them short-term (two to five years). The service as a whole had been reduced in strength to 35,500.

The RAF took up the task of policing the British Empire from the air. It was argued that the use of air power would prove to be a more cost-effective way of controlling large areas than by using conventional land forces. Sir Hugh Trenchard, the Chief of the Air Staff, had formulated ideas about the use of aircraft in colonial policing and these were first put into practice in 1920 when the RAF and imperial ground units defeated rebel Somaliland dervishes. The following year, in 1921, the RAF was given responsibility for all British forces in Iraq with the task of 'policing' the tribal unrest. The RAF also saw service in Afghanistan in 1925, where they were employed independently for the first time in their history, then again in 1928, when following the outbreak of civil war, the British Legation and some European diplomatic staff based in Kabul were cut off. Activities in Great Britain[edit]

An RAF advertisement recruiting radio operators, from the 21 December 1923 edition of The Radio Times It was during the inter-war years that the RAF had to fight for its survival – some questioned the need for a separate air force, especially in peacetime. To prevent itself being disbanded and its duties returned to the Army and the Navy, the RAF spent considerable energies keeping itself in the public eye by such things as the annual Hendon Air Show, supporting a team for the Schneider Trophy air racing competition, and by producing documentary films. In 1936, a reorganisation of RAF command saw the creation of Fighter Command, Bomber Command and Coastal Command. Naval aviation[edit] Main article: Fleet Air Arm The creation of the RAF removed all aircraft and flying personnel from the Navy, although the Admiralty remained in control of aircraft carriers. On 1 April 1924, the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force was formed under Air Ministry control. It consisted of those RAF units that were normally embarked on aircraft carriers and fighting ships. The Chief of the Air Staff, Lord Trenchard, his air staff and his successors argued that "air is one and indivisible" and hence that naval aviation was properly the responsibility of the RAF. The Admiralty took the opposite view and, during the first half of the 1920s, pressed hard for the return of naval aviation to their control. It has been argued that the British defence arrangements in the inter-war years had a serious impact upon the doctrinal development of British naval air power as the Navy lacked experienced naval aviators.

During the 1920s and first half of the 1930s, Government spending on the RAF was limited and the air staff put a higher priority on strategic bombing than on naval aviation. The Admiralty were once again campaigning for the return of naval aviation to their control. This time they were successful and on April 1933, the Fleet Air Arm was returned to full Admiralty control under the Inskip Award and renamed the Air Branch of the Royal Navy.

Strategic bombing[edit] The RAF developed its doctrine of strategic bombing after taking influence from the bombing of Britain during World War I by the German Luftstreitkräfte. Trenchard established the Independent Air Force, the world's first strategic bombing unit, to carry out similar British air raids on the German Empire. This led to the construction of long-range bombers and became the basic philosophy in the Second World War.

The RAF underwent rapid expansion following the outbreak of war against Nazi Germany in 1939. This included the training of British aircrews in British Commonwealth countries under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, and the secondment of many whole squadrons, and tens of thousands of individual personnel, from Commonwealth air forces. For example, by the end of the war, Royal Canadian Air Force personnel had contributed more than 30 squadrons to service with RAF formations; almost a quarter of Bomber Command's personnel were Canadian.[20] Similarly, about nine percent of the personnel who served with the RAF in Europe and the Mediterranean were seconded from the Royal Australian Air Force.[21] To these and other British Commonwealth personnel were later added thousands of men from other countries, including many who had fled from German-occupied Europe.[22]

A defining period of the RAF's existence came during the Battle of Britain. Over the summer of 1940, the RAF held off the Luftwaffe in perhaps the most prolonged and complicated air campaign in history. This arguably contributed immensely to the delay and cancellation of German plans for an invasion of the United Kingdom (Operation Sea Lion). Of these few hundred RAF fighter pilots, Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said in the House of Commons on 20 August, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".[23] Although, he first spoke these words upon exiting the Battle of Britain Bunker at RAF Uxbridge on 16 August. However, in recent years some military historians have controversially suggested that the RAF's actions would not have prevented an invasion and that the key deterrent was the Royal Navy's command of the sea.

The main RAF effort during the war was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany. From 31 May 1942 RAF Bomber Command was able to mount large-scale night raids, sometimes involving up to 1,000 aircraft. From mid-1942 increasing numbers of these aircraft were heavy four-engined bombers such as the Handley-Page Halifax and the Avro Lancaster. Noteworthy raids include Operation Millennium against Cologne, the first 1000-bomber raid; Operation Chastise, the 'Dambusters' raids on targets in the Ruhr Valley; Operation Gomorrah, the destruction of Hamburg; and the 'Battle of Berlin'. The lighter, fast two-engine de Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber was used for tactical raids like Operation Carthage, a raid on the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, as well as a night-fighter.[25]

There exists considerable historical controversy about the ethics of large-scale firebombing attacks against German cities during the last few months of the war, such as the bombing of Dresden, the bombing of Pforzheim, the bombing of Heilbronn, and other German cities.



Structure[]

Personnel[]

Aircraft[]

Fighters and attack aircraft[]

Bombers[]

Airborne early warning aircraft[]

Reconnaissance[]

Helicopters[]

Transport and air-to-air refueling aircraft[]

Search and rescue aircraft[]

Training aircraft[]

Symbols, flags, emblems and uniform[]

Ceremonial functions and display[]

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