The Royal Air Force is 90 years old today, the oldest independent air force in the world. It was officially established on 1st April 1918, when the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) merged with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) to form a single air arm for Great Britain.
Its history is pretty amazing by any standards: two world wars, innumerable "small wars", and in more recent times the Falklands, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's facing difficult times today with many demands on its limited resources, but it's doing its best to cope in the classic RAF tradition. For those who'd like to skim through its history, the service's official Web site offers a Timeline.
Here are a few souvenirs of the occasion. First, in three full-size photographs (click them to enlarge) is the memorandum that established the initial structure of the RAF in 1919. In only three pages of Flight International magazine the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal H. M. Trenchard, summarized the entire raison d'être and structure of the new force. One wonders whether any air force commander could be as succinct today!
There is only one person still alive who was a founding member of the RAF (and of the RNAS before it). Henry Allingham is famous in his own right as the oldest man in Europe, at 111 years old. He credits his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women—and a good sense of humour!" In a newspaper interview today he described his early experiences. A snippet:
I actually took my first flight three years earlier in 1915 and over all these years I remember it like yesterday.
It was still the Royal Naval Air Service then and I was the engineer in an Avro 504 biplane flying a reconnaissance mission over the North Sea.
This was only a dozen years after the Wright brothers flew the first plane, so it was the most amazing adventure for a young bloke like me.
It was so noisy, I do remember the deafening throb and the chap on the ground shouting "Chocks away!"
Then we were up, the freezing wind gushing past my face as we climbed steeply, my heart in my stomach as we banked.
My pilot and I had left Great Yarmouth armed with a rifle, two pigeons, and just enough fuel to get us to the Dutch coast and back again.
The pigeons were there for if we crashed - they would fly back to base with the message. The rifles were in case we saw the enemy... we had no built-in guns, so we would just have to fire from the cockpit.
To be honest, all the planes were so flimsy and unpredictable that both British and German pilots would immediately turn back rather than face each other in the skies.
With just a small windshield to protect us, we wore scarves and sheepskin and smeared Vaseline on our faces. Even so, it was still bitterly cold and I wished I'd wrapped up warmer.
But I remember getting back on the ground and just itching to take off again.
Mr. Allingham is an extraordinary man. Here's a BBC interview with him filmed last year, in which he discusses his RNAS and RAF service.
Most appropriately, Mr. Allingham was the guest of honor today at a function at RAF Odiham to mark the anniversary.
Today saw a number of celebratory fly-pasts in England. The Red Arrows, the RAF's aerobatic display team, flew over London in their nine BAE Hawk trainers accompanied by four Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft.
And to round things off, the first four squadrons of the RAF each put a plane into the air for a formation display. From front to back, they are from Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4 Squadrons flying the Harrier GR9, Panavia Tornado, Eurofighter Typhoon and Harrier GR9 respectively. All four squadrons were in existence as part of the Royal Flying Corps even before the founding of the RAF.
Congratulations once again to a justly proud Service.
Peter
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