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The Royal Air Force was formed in 1918 to defend the skies over Britain during the First World War and made a major contribution to winning one of the largest and most devastating conflicts of the twentieth century. Yet, when the war ended, its existence as an independent air service came under threat from severe defence cuts and intense scrutiny from some quarters as to whether it was needed at all. The Second World War put paid to all the uncertainty and sealed the RAF's place in the armed services. It has since played a vital role in many large-scale conflicts, as well as in peacekeeping and international aid operations. Celebrating a century of the world's oldest independent air force, The RAF at 100 showcases vivid and evocative images from the Mirrorpix archive that trace the story of the RAF from its earliest days through wartime and peacetime and into the modern age.

The Royal Air Force had placed a great deal of faith in its force of bombers, Bomber Command, in the event of a future war. The belief in the ability of formations of bombers flying in daylight and unescorted, protecting themselves from enemy fighter attack, informed early tactics but led to bloody losses. Hampered by government restrictions on targets, by late 1941 Bomber Command was in crisis.\n\nAs a result, and coupled the growing dire war situation, a new and forceful commander, Sir Arthur Harris, was appointed and new strategies allowed Bomber Command to broaden its attacks despite some opposition. The result was the area bombing strategy which focussed attacks upon enemy held towns and cities. This Main Offensive period lasted throughout 1943-1944 and saw both victories and defeats. It was also the period that saw a limited number of precision attacks; on Augsburg, Peenemunde and, most famously, the Ruhr dams.\n\nBomber Command also aided in tactical and strategic support for the invasion of Europe and the subsequent fight to push inland. New technological developments allowed Bomber Command to hit V-Weapons sites and to focus more on precision bombing, but Harris remained determined to hit German towns and cities whenever possible, while the Command's growing power allowed it to rain devastation upon its targets, culminating at Dresden.\n\nMuch has been written about Bomber Command, but this book focusses largely on those who took part in the raids and on public attitudes towards the campaign in Britain. Using accounts from national and local archives, newspapers and existing historiography, the book seeks to shed light on untold stories from Bomber Command's war.

This is the fifth book in the series of photographs of British combat aircraft of the 1970s and 1980s and covers the RAF helicopters in service during those two decades and their part in the latter stages of the Cold War. The Westland Whirlwind was used in the air-sea rescue (ASR) role before being replaced by the Westland Sea King, both aircraft being prominent around the British coastline with their bright yellow colouring. The Westland Wessex was used by the RAF in a variety of roles including search and rescue. The A rospatiale Puma was introduced to service with the RAF in 1968 and is still being flown today while the Boeing Chinook came into service in 1981, just in time to take part in the Falklands War, and is still in service today. Containing 180 photographs, this book is a pictorial compendium of these iconic machines.

This is the fifth book in the series of photographs of British combat aircraft of the 1970s and 1980s and covers the RAF helicopters in service during those two decades and their part in the latter stages of the Cold War. The Westland Whirlwind was used in the air-sea rescue (ASR) role before being replaced by the Westland Sea King, both aircraft being prominent around the British coastline with their bright yellow colouring. The Westland Wessex was used by the RAF in a variety of roles including search and rescue. The A rospatiale Puma was introduced to service with the RAF in 1968 and is still being flown today while the Boeing Chinook came into service in 1981, just in time to take part in the Falklands War, and is still in service today. Containing 180 photographs, this book is a pictorial compendium of these iconic machines.

The events of 1942 marked a pivotal year in the history of British air power. For more than two decades the theory that long-range bombing could win wars had dominated British defence policy. The vast majority of warplanes ordered for the RAF were designed either to bomb enemy cities or stop the enemy from bombing British cites. Conventional armies and the air forces that supported them were seen as an outmoded way of waging war.\n\nDuring 1941 evidence began to mount that British policy was wrong. It had become clear the RAF's bomber offensive against Germany had, until that point, achieved very little. Meanwhile, the wars raging in Europe, Africa and Asia were being decided not by heavy bombers, but by armies and their supporting tactical air forces. Britain had never had the resources to build a large army as well as a strategic bomber fleet; it had always had to make a choice. Now it seemed the country might have made the wrong choice.\n\nFor the first time since 1918 Britain began thinking seriously about a different way of fighting wars. Was it too late to change? Was a strategic bombing campaign the only option open to Britain? Could the United Kingdom help its Soviet ally more by invading France as Stalin so vehemently demanded? Could this be done in 1942?\n\nLooking further ahead, was it time to begin the development of an entirely new generation of warplanes to support the Army? Should the RAF have specialist ground attack aircraft and air superiority fighters?\n\nThe answers to these questions, which are all explored here by aviation historian Greg Baughen, would help shape the development of British air power for decades to come.

After the Gulf War of 1990, No Fly Zones (NFZ) were established over northern and southern Iraq and the Tornado GR 1 force stepped up to operations over the southern NFZ. \n\nThe Tornado GR 4 took responsibility for RAF combat air operations in Afghanistan from the Harrier force in 2009, and in 2011 was involved in missions against the Gaddafi regime in Libya. The unique multirole capabilities of the aircraft enabled it to support ground operations with the Raptor reconnaissance pod, Brimstone missiles and Paveway IV laser-guided bombs until withdrawal in 2014. The Tornado GR 4 was also used for operations over Iraq and Syria against the ISIL terrorist organisation. Intensive air operations were flown between 2014 and 2019, when the Tornado GR 4 was finally withdrawn from RAF Service.\n\nThis volume, written by former RAF pilot Michael Napier, provides detailed first-hand accounts of the missions undertaken by the Tornado crews during the most recent conflicts over the Middle East and the Balkans.

At its height during the Second World War, the RAF totalled 185,000 personnel. Men and women, from home and overseas, served alongside members of Dominion Air Forces, and those members of the air forces of occupied Europe who had escaped to fight on. All are covered in the RAF casualty files. The heaviest losses were suffered by the aircrews; in Bomber Command alone some 75,000 were killed, wounded or captured. All information concerning casualties was carefully complied at the Air Ministry and now, from these the official records, those covering operational losses (in the air and on the ground), and flying accidents are being made available to the public through The National Archives.\n\nThis huge collection of casualty files contains a wealth of contemporary documentation from a variety of sources including captured German records. The fascinating insight into the fate of casualties provided by the Casualty Files includes official documents, examples of which are given, accounts of searches undertaken to establish the fate of the missing, places of burial, copies of information received from the International Red Cross and from sources within enemy occupied lands, as well as letters from family and friends some of which reveal dark secrets of bigamy, adultery, illegitimacy, debt and dishonour.\n\nIn this ground-breaking book Mary Hudson has used her expert knowledge to provide an invaluable guide to the understanding of these records for use by researchers and family members alike. She takes the reader on a journey through the files, explaining when and how the RAF Casualty Branch (who opened and maintained the files) was formed, where the information held in the records originated, as well as providing an understanding of the documents themselves and explanation of matters the records refer to.

RAF and East German Fast-Jet Pilots in the Cold War is the result of ten years of research, involving many visits to the former German Democratic Republic by a small Anglo/German team of military specialists. Their purpose was to explore the lives of RAF and East German ?ghter and ?ghter-bomber pilots, in the air and on the ground, at work and play, during the Cold War in North Germany.\n\nThe book is based largely on personal testimony from these pilots, coupled with facts drawn from of?cial archives and comment from other historical sources. Where possible, political considerations have been avoided and no outright criticism has been intended, readers being left to draw their own conclusions on the thinking, strategies, equipment and tactics discussed. Far from being an intellectual polemic on the Cold War, the text and photographs merely record a slice of history as seen through the eyes of a select few who took up arms in the defence of their respective homelands - and faced each other daily across the Iron Curtain.\n\nIn an insightful conclusion, Nigel Walpole reassess the threat that both sides believed was genuine during those tense decades of the Cold War and examines the possible course and nature of a conflict which neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact wanted but both actively planned for.

The Battle of Britain was a fight for survival against a seemingly unstoppable foe. With the German army poised to invade, only the fighters of the Royal Air Force stood between Hitler and the conquest of Britain. Losses were high on both sides, but the Spitfires, Hurricanes, Havocs and Defiants of the RAF began to take their toll on the overextended, under-protected Kampfgruppen of Heinkel He 111s, Junkers Ju 87s and 88s, and Dornier Do 17s. \n\nBoth sides learned and adapted as the campaign went on. As the advantage began to shift from the Luftwaffe to the RAF, the Germans were forced to switch from round-the-clock bombing to only launching night-raids, often hitting civilian targets in the dreaded Blitz. This beautifully illustrated study dissects the tactics and technology of the duels in this new kind of war, bringing the reader into the cockpits of the RAF fighters and Luftwaffe bombers to show precisely where the Battle of Britain was won and lost.

We Seek the Highest has been the motto of the thousands of Officer Cadets who, over ten decades, have passed through the rigorous training regime at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, Lincolnshire. The words embody the College ethos: to strive to reach the tough standards demanded by the RAF, in the air and on the ground.\n\nThis book tells the 100-year story from the point of view of the Officer Cadets themselves. The College was founded in 1919 - some eighteen months after the birth of the RAF itself - with the aim of providing a cadre of disciplined, highly-trained officers, ready to lead the service through the uncertain post-war and post-Empire times to come. Since then, it has responded continuously to the UK's political, economic and military requirements.\n\nThe RAF Officer Cadets' world has thus been one of change. The author documents these changes from 1919 to today, overlaying the historical and social scene with the candidly related airborne and ground-based exploits of three-score ex-cadets.\n\nThe core narrative is based on the three years at Cranwell of 81 Entry of Flight Cadets, who graduated in July 1962 with thirty-seven jet pilots and eight navigators, having launched a curriculum-changing experiment in degree-level studies.\n\nWith a Foreword from an Air Chief Marshal former cadet, 130 illustrations, and a full index, the whole offers a cadets' tribute to a world-famous military academy on its centenary.

When the expansion of the RAF began in 1934, Air Commodore Tedder observed that the established order of school training not only failed to produce operational competence, but left so much to be done by the operational squadrons that they could only attain passable military efficiency after an uphill struggle. He proposed to raise the standards of school instruction so that pilots would leave the facility as operationally competent pilots, although it would mean lengthening the period of instruction as well as revising the syllabus.\n\nIt was against this somewhat sorry background of training and logistical problems, as well as having the clouds of war firmly visible on the horizon, that the decision was taken to form a new RAF Training Command on 1 May 1936; an organisation derived from the ashes of the former RAF Inland Area.\n\nThis book will tell the story - in words and pictures - of RAF Training Command from 1 May 1936 until it was separated into Flying Training Command and Technical Training Command on 27 May 1940. Both commands were then transferred into the newly re-established RAF Training Command on 1 June 1968, until it was then absorbed into RAF Support Command on 13 June 1977.

The Special Operations Executive developed a vast network of agents across Occupied Europe which played a vital role in developing and sustaining Resistance movements that persistently sought to subvert German control of their territories. The culmination of their efforts was seen when the Allied armies landed at Normandy in June 1944, with the SOE and the Resistance causing widespread destruction and disruption behind the German lines.\n\nNone of this would have been possible had it not been for the Royal Air Force. Not only did the RAF supply the SOE, and the movements it led and co-ordinated, with the thousands of tons of arms and equipment needed to undertake this role, it also delivered and retrieved agents from under the very noses of the enemy.\n\nCompiled at the end of the war by the Air Historical Branch of the RAF, this is an extremely detailed and comprehensive account of the RAFs support for the SOE, and in it we learn of the enormous and complex arrangements undertaken by the Special Duties squadrons as well as showing how the material delivered by these aircraft was used in the field.\n\nThis account is reproduced here in its entirety, along with a detailed appendix containing the official historical record of Bomber Command aircrews and aircraft engaged in clandestine operations. Taken together, this book represents the most comprehensive account of the RAFs support for SOE ever published.

It is a recognized fact that, had the war gone badly for the Allies on the India/Burma front, and had the Japanese succeeded in invading the Indian Continent, the outcome of the war would have been entirely different. Yet despite this, the campaign on the Burma front is offered surprisingly scant coverage in the majority of photo-history books. This new book, from respected military historian and author Norman Franks, attempts to redress the balance, noting the importance of this particular aerial conflict within the wider context of the Second World War. Franks takes as his focus the pilots, aircraft and landscapes that characterized the campaign. Photographs acquired during the course of an intensive research period are consolidated into a volume that is sure to make for a popular addition to the established Images of War series. Many unpublished photographs feature, each one offering a new insight into the conflict as it unfolded over Burmese skies. The archive offers a wealth of dynamic images of RAF Hurricanes and Spitfires in flight, with shots of both the aircraft and the pilots employed during this challenging conflict.\nTo fly and fight in Burma, pilots really had to be at the top of their game. The Japanese enemy certainly weren't the only problem to contend with; weather, poor food, incredible heat and all its attendant maladies, jungle diseases, tigers, elephants, fevers...The Japanese were the real enemy but the British pilots had so much more to deal with. And they did it for years. In Britain, a pilot could look forward to a break from operations every six months or so on average. In Burma, pilots first employed in 1941 were still flying operations in 1944. The collection represents a determination on the author's part to record the part played by these resilient and skilled RAF fighter pilots, the contribution that they paid in supporting General Slim's 14th Army and the part they ultimately played in defeating the Japanese attempts to break through into India. These efforts, all paramount and imperative to success, are celebrated here in words and images in a volume sure to appeal to Spitfire and Hurricane enthusiasts, as well as the more general reader.

When the Gulf Crisis of 1990 was triggered by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the RAF responded by sending Tornado F 3 fighters to Saudi Arabia to help defend the country against further aggression. These aircraft were followed by the deployment of Tornado GR 1 strike/attack aircraft to Bahrain. Eventually three wings of Tornado GR 1s were established in Bahrain, Tabuk and Dhahran, as well as a detachment of Tornado GR 1A reconnaissance aircraft. At the start of hostilities in January 1991, the Tornado GR 1 wings carried out night-low-level attacks against Iraqi Main Operating Bases using the JP233 runway denial weapon. Meanwhile, Combat Air Patrols from the Tornado F 3 wing ensured the integrity of Saudi airspace.\n\nOnce air supremacy had been established, the Tornado GR 1 force moved to medium-level operations, initially by night and later by day, to attack the Iraqi oil production and storage infrastructure. The arrival in theatre of a laser designation capability with Pave Spike/Buccaneer and TIALD/Tornado enabled precision attacks against the Iraq transport system to cut off the frontline troops from resupply and reinforcement and then to carry out a systematic destruction of the airfield facilities. Tornado GR 1A reconnaissance operations played a major role in the location of Scud missile launchers and in the planning and execution of the land offensive. Throughout the conflict, the Tornado F 3 wing at Dhahran carried out defensive counter-air operations to ensure the safety of the base areas. This volume, publishing 30 years after the conflict to free Kuwait, provides detailed first-hand accounts of the missions undertaken by the Tornado crews. It is illustrated by photographs taken by aircrew involved in the operation and includes 30 newly commissioned profile artworks and detailed nose art views of the aircraft ranged against Iraq.

For aviation, the 1950s was a fascinating decade. For the Royal Air Force, it witnessed the transition from propeller to jet in the fields of fighter, bomber, trainer and transport aircraft. The 1950s saw the end of the Second World War veterans Lancasters, Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Sunderlands. They were replaced by the first generation of jet aircraft including the Vampire, Hunter, Javelin and, at the end of the decade, the English Electric P.1 later named the Lightning. This photographic record of the RAF during the period illustrates the full varied and wonderful array of equipment in use and also considers the important events of the decade including Korea, the Malayan Emergency, Kenya and the Suez Crisis. The decade also saw the beginning of the Cold War, which in turn led to significant developments in military aviation. For the RAF this included the V-bomber force of Valiant, Victor and Vulcan.Another development was that of the nuclear weapon and this volume includes images and information from Operation Grapple, the testing of Britain's first live thermonuclear weapon seventy times more powerful than that dropped onHiroshima in 1945 which was dropped from Vickers Valiant XD818 at Christmas Island on 15 May 1957.\nAnother Cold War item featured is the Thor Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile, three of which were located on their launches at twenty RAF bomber stations around the UK. 1953 saw the Coronation of HRH Queen Elizabeth II take place at Westminster Abbey on 2 June. Shortly afterwards, a Coronation Review of the Royal Air Force was organized at RAF Odiham, and many images of the never-to-be-repeated event are included here, as are details of all the 640 aircraft involved in the spectacular flypast that followed the royal inspection. Each chapter focuses on a specific year, relaying all the fascinating events and highlights. Lavishly illustrated from the archives of the Air Historical Branch, this is a colourful and insightful history, told with narrative flair and a clear passion for the subject matter.

RAF and East German Fast-Jet Pilots in the Cold War is the result of ten years of research, involving many visits to the former German Democratic Republic by a small Anglo/German team of military specialists. Their purpose was to explore the lives of RAF and East German ?ghter and ?ghter-bomber pilots, in the air and on the ground, at work and play, during the Cold War in North Germany.\n\nThe book is based largely on personal testimony from these pilots, coupled with facts drawn from of?cial archives and comment from other historical sources. Where possible, political considerations have been avoided and no outright criticism has been intended, readers being left to draw their own conclusions on the thinking, strategies, equipment and tactics discussed. Far from being an intellectual polemic on the Cold War, the text and photographs merely record a slice of history as seen through the eyes of a select few who took up arms in the defence of their respective homelands - and faced each other daily across the Iron Curtain.\n\nIn an insightful conclusion, Nigel Walpole reassess the threat that both sides believed was genuine during those tense decades of the Cold War and examines the possible course and nature of a conflict which neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact wanted but both actively planned for.

RAF Coastal Command was founded in 1936 when the Royal Air Force restructured into Fighter, Bomber and Coastal Commands. During the preceding inter-war years, maritime aviation had been seriously neglected due to the disagreements between the Royal Navy and the RAF over the ownership, roles and investment in maritime air power. Consequently, the new Command quickly became known as the 'Cinderella Service'.\n\nHowever, the Command played a key role in the Allied Victory during the Second World War, particularly during the Battle of the Atlantic. From a modest beginning, the Command blossomed into a powerful anti-submarine force when protecting Allied convoys from the German submarine force, while also protecting that shipping from attacks by the Luftwaffe.\n\nEquipped with legendary aircraft such as the Sunderland, Wellington, Catalina and Liberator, along with advances in radar technology such as the new Mark III ASV (Air-to-surface vessel), it was able to locate, attack and destroy an increasing number of U-boats that had fast become the scourge of the convoys.\n\nBy the end of the Second World War, Coastal Command had flown more than a million flying hours, completed 240,000 operations and destroyed 212 U-boats - but suffered an ever higher loss rate than Bomber Command with 2,060 aircraft lost, along with the lives of 5,866 personnel.\n\nPost-war, Coastal Command saw a significant rundown but still made a contribution to the Berlin Airlift. When equipped with the new Shackleton aircraft, their activities shifted to anti-submarine patrols against the Soviet Navy and other fleets of the Warsaw Pact, particularly in the Atlantic.\n\nIn 1969, Coastal Command was absorbed into the newly formed Strike Command.\n\nIllustrated with images from the Air Historical Branch - many of which have never previously been published.

When the expansion of the RAF began in 1934, Air Commodore Tedder observed that the established order of school training not only failed to produce operational competence, but left so much to be done by the operational squadrons that they could only attain passable military efficiency after an uphill struggle. He proposed to raise the standards of school instruction so that pilots would leave the facility as operationally competent pilots, although it would mean lengthening the period of instruction as well as revising the syllabus.\n\nIt was against this somewhat sorry background of training and logistical problems, as well as having the clouds of war firmly visible on the horizon, that the decision was taken to form a new RAF Training Command on 1 May 1936; an organisation derived from the ashes of the former RAF Inland Area.\n\nThis book will tell the story - in words and pictures - of RAF Training Command from 1 May 1936 until it was separated into Flying Training Command and Technical Training Command on 27 May 1940. Both commands were then transferred into the newly re-established RAF Training Command on 1 June 1968, until it was then absorbed into RAF Support Command on 13 June 1977.

At its height during the Second World War, the RAF totalled 185,000 personnel. Men and women, from home and overseas, served alongside members of Dominion Air Forces, and those members of the air forces of occupied Europe who had escaped to fight on. All are covered in the RAF casualty files. The heaviest losses were suffered by the aircrews; in Bomber Command alone some 75,000 were killed, wounded or captured. All information concerning casualties was carefully complied at the Air Ministry and now, from these the official records, those covering operational losses (in the air and on the ground), and flying accidents are being made available to the public through The National Archives.\n\nThis huge collection of casualty files contains a wealth of contemporary documentation from a variety of sources including captured German records. The fascinating insight into the fate of casualties provided by the Casualty Files includes official documents, examples of which are given, accounts of searches undertaken to establish the fate of the missing, places of burial, copies of information received from the International Red Cross and from sources within enemy occupied lands, as well as letters from family and friends some of which reveal dark secrets of bigamy, adultery, illegitimacy, debt and dishonour.\n\nIn this ground-breaking book Mary Hudson has used her expert knowledge to provide an invaluable guide to the understanding of these records for use by researchers and family members alike. She takes the reader on a journey through the files, explaining when and how the RAF Casualty Branch (who opened and maintained the files) was formed, where the information held in the records originated, as well as providing an understanding of the documents themselves and explanation of matters the records refer to.

The Special Operations Executive developed a vast network of agents across Occupied Europe which played a vital role in developing and sustaining Resistance movements that persistently sought to subvert German control of their territories. The culmination of their efforts was seen when the Allied armies landed at Normandy in June 1944, with the SOE and the Resistance causing widespread destruction and disruption behind the German lines.\n\nNone of this would have been possible had it not been for the Royal Air Force. Not only did the RAF supply the SOE, and the movements it led and co-ordinated, with the thousands of tons of arms and equipment needed to undertake this role, it also delivered and retrieved agents from under the very noses of the enemy.\n\nCompiled at the end of the war by the Air Historical Branch of the RAF, this is an extremely detailed and comprehensive account of the RAFs support for the SOE, and in it we learn of the enormous and complex arrangements undertaken by the Special Duties squadrons as well as showing how the material delivered by these aircraft was used in the field.\n\nThis account is reproduced here in its entirety, along with a detailed appendix containing the official historical record of Bomber Command aircrews and aircraft engaged in clandestine operations. Taken together, this book represents the most comprehensive account of the RAFs support for SOE ever published.

From their modest origins with BE.2c and Vickers Victoria biplanes delivering food and ammunition in the Mesopotamian deserts to the massive Globemasters delivering hardware in the same theatre a century later, transport aircraft have played a key role in Britain's wars. It was the Cold War that saw transport aircraft become necessary war-fighting equipment. Operation Corporate in 1982 identified the need for large-capacity strategic transport aircraft, something reinforced by Operation Granby in 1990-91, and led to the acquisition of the Lockheed TriStar and Boeing C-17A Globemaster. When the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq began, the RAF's transport fleet was ready, and with the new model Hercules, and the Airbus Voyager and Atlas, Britain's armed forces have a transport force second to none.\n\n First in, last out' is a concise description of the operations of the RAF's transport force. Since 1915, aircraft have supported troops on the ground, carried personnel to and from war zones, evacuated civilians and provided succour to the needy. RAF Transport Command's motto, Ferio Ferendo, translates as I strike by carrying', and that is exactly what transport aircraft have done for over a century. With over 130 photographs, this book describes the evolution of the aircraft that provided the airlift capacity for Britain's armed forces wherever they served, and as the 2021 Operation Pitting showed, transport aircraft are still last out.

We Seek the Highest has been the motto of the thousands of Officer Cadets who, over ten decades, have passed through the rigorous training regime at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, Lincolnshire. The words embody the College ethos: to strive to reach the tough standards demanded by the RAF, in the air and on the ground.\n\nThis book tells the 100-year story from the point of view of the Officer Cadets themselves. The College was founded in 1919 - some eighteen months after the birth of the RAF itself - with the aim of providing a cadre of disciplined, highly-trained officers, ready to lead the service through the uncertain post-war and post-Empire times to come. Since then, it has responded continuously to the UK's political, economic and military requirements.\n\nThe RAF Officer Cadets' world has thus been one of change. The author documents these changes from 1919 to today, overlaying the historical and social scene with the candidly related airborne and ground-based exploits of three-score ex-cadets.\n\nThe core narrative is based on the three years at Cranwell of 81 Entry of Flight Cadets, who graduated in July 1962 with thirty-seven jet pilots and eight navigators, having launched a curriculum-changing experiment in degree-level studies.\n\nWith a Foreword from an Air Chief Marshal former cadet, 130 illustrations, and a full index, the whole offers a cadets' tribute to a world-famous military academy on its centenary.

A photographic guide to surviving planes from the Battle of Britain. The Battle of Britain is widely considered to be Britain's finest hour. The 'Few' who so bravely fought to save the nation will not be forgotten, nor will they be around forever to recount the heroism of the summer of 1940 first-hand. In contrast, the number of restored and preserved aircraft in our museums and skies is at an all-time high. Authentic warbirds have never been better cared for and formations of 15 or more Spitfires and half a dozen Hurricanes are not unheard of at UK air shows. It is now left to the sights and sounds of these surviving aircraft to remind us of the sacrifices, daring and bravery of those who saved Britain from imminent invasion in 1940. This book features a brief history of all the front-line RAF fighter aircraft that were involved in the famous battle and explores some of the major training and support aeroplanes that contributed to the iconic events. The story is told using over 160 photographs of surviving and restored aircraft in the air, on the ground and in unique formations together. 160 illustrations

As the nearest RAF station to Occupied Europe, the airfield at Hawkinge in Kent found itself quite literally on the frontline during the Second World War. However, Hawkinge's association with British military aviation began more than two decades earlier, during the First World War.\n\nAlready a pre-war airfield, it was in 1915 that the land was requisitioned for use by the Royal Fling Corps. The first personnel arrived a few months later to serve at was initially named Folkestone Field. Mainly used as a base for transporting aircraft across to France and the Western Front, a name change to Hawkinge Aeroplane Dispatch Station soon followed, at which point its remit also included the transportation of supplies to troops in France and Belgium.\n\nIt was following the re-organisation of the RAF in 1923 that Hawkinge underwent the next stage in its development. New hangars and operations buildings were erected, with water and communications systems installed. The airfield's role changed to that of training for both RAF and the Army; 25 Squadron was the first full squadron to be based at Hawkinge.\n\nIn the first months of the Second World War, airfield was re-designated as a Fighter Station in No.11 Group, following which the first Hurricanes from 3 Squadron arrived on 19 December 1939. Throughout the Battle of France and into the Dunkirk evacuation Hawkinge played a vital role providing around the clock air-cover for Allied forces. But it was in the summer of 1940 that Hawkinge endured its finest hour'.\n\nThe first Luftwaffe attack on Hawkinge occurred on 12 August. Despite widespread damage, the grass runways were quickly repaired, ensuring that the Spitfires and Hurricanes which used it as a forward base were soon operating again. Despite the Luftwaffe's best efforts, Hawkinge remained operational throughout the war.\n\nAs the RAF went on the offensive in 1941, Hawkinge had a vital part to play in maintaining these missions against Goering's forces - both as a location to refuel on the way out, or a place of refuge on the return, both for fighters and bombers alike, including those of the USAAF following America's entry into the war. Following the war, the fighter base was officially closed on 3 September 1945.\n\nIn 1964 the Ministry of Defence sold the land, although for a short while in 1968, memories of the war were invoked with the airfield's use in the making of the classic film Battle of Britain. Only a small corner of the original site has survived and is today home to the renowned Kent Battle of Britain Museum.

Much has been written about the Royal Air Force during the Second World War-memoirs, biographies, histories of Fighter and Bomber commands, technical studies of the aircraft, accounts of individual operations and exploits - but few books have attempted to take the reader on a journey through basic training and active service as air or ground crew and eventual demobilization at the end of the war. That is the aim of James Goulty's Eyewitness RAF. Using a vivid selection of testimony from men and women, he offers a direct insight into every aspect of wartime life in the service.\n\nThroughout the book the emphasis is on the individual's experience of the RAF - the preparations for flying, flying itself, the daily routines of an air base, time on leave, and the issues of discipline, morale and motivation. A particularly graphic section describes, in the words of the men themselves, what it felt like to go on operations and the impact of casualties - airmen who were killed, injured or taken prisoner.\n\nA fascinating varied inside view of the RAF emerges which is perhaps less heroic and glamorous than the image created by some post-war accounts, but it gives readers today a much more realistic appreciation of the whole gamut of life in the RAF seventy years ago.

In May 1940, the opposing German and Allied forces seemed reasonably well matched. On the ground, the four allied nations had more troops, artillery and tanks. Even in the air, the German advantage in numbers was slight. Yet two months later, the Allied armies had been crushed. The Netherlands, Belgium and France had all surrendered and Britain stood on her own, facing imminent defeat. Subsequent accounts of the campaign have tended to see this outcome as predetermined, with the seeds of defeat sown long before the fighting began. Was it so inevitable? Should the RAF have done more to help the Allied armies? Why was such a small proportion of the RAF's frontline strength committed to the crucial battle on the ground? Could Fighter Command have done more to protect the British and French troops being evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk? This study looks at the operations flown and takes a fresh look at the fatal decisions made behind the scenes, decisions that unnecessarily condemned RAF aircrews to an unequal struggle and ultimately ensured Allied defeat. What followed became the RAF's finest hour with victory achieved by the narrowest of margins.\nOr was it, as some now suggest, a victory that was always inevitable? If so, how was the German military juggernaut that had conquered most of Europe so suddenly halted? This study looks at the decisions and mistakes made by both sides. It explains how the British obsession with bomber attacks on cities had led to the development of the wrong type of fighter force and how only a fortuitous sequence of events enabled Fighter Command to prevail. It also looks at how ready the RAF was to deal with an invasion. How much air support could the British Army have expected? Why were hundreds of American combat planes and experienced Polish and Czech pilots left on the sidelines? And when the Blitz began, and Britain finally got the war it was expecting, what did this campaign tell us about the theories on air power that had so dominated pre-war air policy? All these questions and more are answered in Greg Baughen's third book. Baughen describes the furious battles between the RAF and the Luftwaffe and the equally bitter struggle between the Air Ministry and the War Office - and explains how close Britain really came to defeat in the summer of 1940.

The formation of the Pathfinder Force in August 1942 produced a steady but certain change in the fortunes of Bomber Command. Its effectiveness against targets during the early years of the war had been very difficult to gauge. When examined in detail afterwards, aerial photographs showed that only one third of the aircraft were successfully reaching their target area and less than this were actually placing their bombs with target accuracy. It was known during the large-scale bombing of Coventry in the autumn of 1940 that the Germans had used an elite force of pathfinder aircraft, armed with incendiaries, who had acted as target finders for the main force of German bombers. What was now needed for the RAF were some similar specialist squadrons, with crews handpicked for their discipline, courage, high morale and, in particular, skills in a wider than normal range of flying jobs. Sidney Bufton, Deputy Director of Bomber Operations, developed the concept of a new Target Finding Force, and his tenacity in putting pressure upon senior Air Ministry staff to implement his ideas and bring Bomber Command out of the doldrums paid off.\nThe new force was finally accepted and the choice of Don Bennett as its first Commander was inspired. Bennett was restless, imaginative, and receptive to change. He never accepted second best and he became a legend to all who served under him. Pathfinder Squadrons were equipped with the best available aircraft, which included the famous Lancaster bomber and later, increasingly, the Mosquito which was a hugely versatile and successful fighter bomber. Would be aircrew for the RAF came as volunteers from all parts of the world including Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand. To join a Pathfinder Squadron was a rare privilege but with it went a huge leap in the likelihood of being shot down. Pathfinder aircrew and aircraft had to lead the way for their following Bomber Force in hazardous raid after raid. They flew at night but it took a full 25 minutes to run the gauntlet of the Berlin defences from end to end at full stretch. They were highly vulnerable to the wall of flak thrown up by German city defenders, as well as to attacks by night-fighters. By the end of the war some 56,000 crewmen of Bomber Command had lost their lives.\nMartyn Chorlton has written a gripping account of the RAF's Pathfinder Squadrons, recalling the challenges faced in the smoke-filled skies over occupied Europe. It is also a tribute to the brave young men whose exploits, lives and, in all too many cases, deaths have left a powerful torch to bear for all who care about freedom. The book carries a moving foreward by Michael Wadsworth, Chaplain to the Pathfinders Association.

By the summer of 1943, the Third Reich's fate seemed sealed. The combined might of Britain and the Commonwealth nations, the United States and the Soviet Union had made a Germany victory impossible. All that remained to decide was how the Allies should complete their victory. Would strategic bombing decide the outcome or would ground and air forces working together play the more significant role? Greg Baughen follows the air and land battles in Italy, France and Germany between September 1943 and September 1944, as well as the equally bitter battles behind the scenes as army and air commanders debated and argued over how the war should be won. He charts the trials, tribulations, and successes of the bomber offensive and assesses whether, in the final analysis, it made any contribution to the success of Normandy landings. He explains how army air support went backwards after the successes of the Desert Air Force, and how this led to a failure to support the troops landing on the D-Day beaches in Normandy. He also describes the subsequent revival of tactical air support and how it went on to play a key role in the subsequent campaigns but questions whether Eisenhower, Montgomery or Tedder ever fully understood how to make best use of the massive aerial forces available to them. Drawing on archive documents and accounts written at the time, the author tackles some fundamental defence issues. Was RAF independence a benefit or a hindrance to the Allied cause? To what extent was the War Office to blame for shortcomings in army air support? Did Britain understand the way the methods for waging war were evolving in the twentieth century? He takes a look at how the Air Ministry was interpreting the lessons being learned during the war. Were the defence policies of the twenties and thirties still valid? Had they ever been valid? This, then, is the story of the decisions and actions that the RAF followed in the months leading up to D-Day and how air operations evolved in the subsequent campaign.

The story of the RAF, and in particular Fighter Command, during the Battle of Britain has been told many times. It is a tale of the gallant pilots of The Few', in their Hurricanes and Spitfires, with the nation's back to the wall, fighting off the Luftwaffe's airborne assault against enormous odds. But the story of Fighter Command's operations immediately after the Battle of Britain is less well known.\n\nMarshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh Montague Trenchard commanded the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. His policy then had been for his aircraft and men to be continually on the offensive, always over the German lines taking the fight to the enemy. After being promoted to command the RAF, Trenchard retired in 1930.\n\nIn November 1940, Trenchard showed up again at the Air Ministry and proposed that the RAF should Lean Towards France' - that it should go on the offensive. The RAF would, claimed Trenchard, win the resulting battle of attrition.\n\nOne of the main outcomes of the RAF's new offensive stance was the introduction of the Circus sorties. These were attacks undertaken by a small force of bombers with a powerful fighter escort. They were intended to lure enemy fighters into the air so that they could be engaged by RAF fighters, the primary objective being the destruction of Luftwaffe fighters, followed by the protection of the bombers from attack.\n\nA further development of the Circus missions were Ramrods, Rhubarbs and Rodeos, all of which were variations on the same theme. A Ramrod was similar to a Circus, though in this instance the primary objective was the destruction of the target, the main role of the accompanying fighters being to protect the bombers from attack. A Rhubarb was a small-scale attack by fighters using cloud cover and/or surprise, the object of which was to destroy German aircraft in the air and/or striking at ground targets, whilst a Rodeo consisted of a fighter sweep over enemy territory with no bombers.\n\nDrawing on official documents and archive material, as well as accounts by many of those involved, James Starkey reveals just how Trenchard's views won through and the RAF went on the offensive from late 1940 into 1941. Was it a failed strategy? If so, why was it not halted once the results began to be seen?