RAF100: Through Adversity to the Stars

1 April 2018 marks the 100th Anniversary of the creation of the Royal Air Force. During the world wars the RAF and its forefathers the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service fought a desperate battle for control of the skies. Across the globe the Commission commemorates more than 131,000 service personnel of the flying services who died.

Group of pilots of No. 32 Squadron RFC, Beauval, 1916 (Fourth Army aircraft park). Behind them is an Airco DH.2 (De Havilland Scout) biplane with Monosoupape Rotary Engine. © IWM (Q 11874)

 

The First World War

In December 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first powered flight in history. Travelling at less than 10mph they were airborne for only 59 seconds, but it was a defining moment in world history.

However, the ability to take to the skies was not immediately seen to have much military consequence. Only in 1912 was the Royal Flying Corps established and British military aviation was still in its infancy at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

In the earliest battles of the war their role was reconnaissance, but as the trench lines of the Western Front were formed, observation for artillery became crucial and the development of aerial photography provided a view of enemy lines from above. The slow photographic reconnaissance aircraft had to be protected from raiders, and pilots began to actively pursue and attack their enemies.

By 1916 whole squadrons of aircraft were in action above the Western Front. Far above the trench lines aircraft wheeled and sored. They bombed enemy artillery and supplies, supported ground operations and increasingly ranged far behind the lines. Most famously they fought in desperate ‘dog fights’ with enemy pilots. Fighter aces were portrayed as ‘knights of the air’, yet the pilots war was physically and psychologically demanding, and human or mechanical error often had fatal consequences. Flying was among the most dangerous forms of service, and half of all pilots had become casualties by the war’s end.

In April 1918, the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged to create a new Royal Air Force. By this time, the battle in the air was being fought ferociously by advanced aeroplanes operating in large formations, and by the end of the war the RAF had grown to have more than 100,000 personnel. 

From humble beginnings, airpower had become a vital component of warfare. In the last years of the war German bombers and Zeppelin airships dropped bombs on London and a handful of RAF home defence squadrons were formed. It was a hint of terrible things to come.

Hawker Hurricane Mk Is of No. 242 Squadron RAF during the Battle of Britain, 1940. © IWM (CH 1430)

At the outbreak of the Second World War the Royal Air Force was just 21 years old, but it was about to face its greatest test. From the German use of aircraft in Blitzkrieg to conquer much of  Europe, to the safeguarding of the British Isles in the Battle of Britain, for the first time in history the outcome of a conflict could be decided in the air.

On 4 September 1939, the day after Britain declared war on Germany, RAF bombers attacked German shipping near Brunsbüttel and Wilhelmshaven, and continued to harass German military targets in the early months of the war while Britain built up its military strength .

The German Blitzkrieg which smashed through France and the low countries resulted in British and Allied forces being expelled from Europe, but disaster was averted. While the Royal Navy assisted by the little ships evacuated the British Expeditionary Force, the Royal Air Force fought to keep the skies above Dunkirk clear of German planes.

Weeks later the pilots of the RAF Fighter Command, drawn from across Britain, the Commonwealth and Allied nations fought for survival during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. The Germans, unable to break RAF Fighter Command, began bombing British cities during what became known as the ‘Blitz’. RAF Bomber Command then began a campaign to bomb German industrial areas. As the bombing war increased in intensity, it put more and more strain on Commonwealth airman as night after night they were sent out on bombing raids, each trip reducing the chance they would return.

RAF Coastal Command guarded the seas around the British Isles and hunted German U-boats targeting British and Allied shipping. In Malta, the RAF defended the isle from Italian and German air attacks and guarded vital supply convoys of the Royal Navy.

The war in the air grew in sophistication, with the introduction of faster, more heavily armed and manoeuvrable aircraft, equipped with radar. Commonwealth and Allied air forces shielded the Allied invasion of Normandy, while specialist ground attack aircraft targeted German tank and troop movements.

Remembering the flying services

The dead of the flying services are commemorated across the world. Some lie in cemeteries far from home, others near former airbases. Often aircrews who fought and died together are buried together in eternal comradeship. Many, however, have no known grave and are commemorated on memorials to the missing. The Commission commemorates more than 10,500 airmen from the First World War and 127,500 from the Second World War.

Arras Flying Services Memorial

In April 1917, the Royal Flying Corps fought for control of the skies above Arras. The losses they suffered were so heavy that the period became known to British aircrews as ‘Bloody April’. After the First World War, Arras was chosen as the location for a memorial to all those flyers of the British Empire who died on the Western Front but have no known grave. It was unveiled in July 1932 by Lord Hugh Trenchard, Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

The Runnymede Memorial

‘The Royal Air Force is the loneliest of the services and in it the mystery of men’s fate may be the most impenetrable’, inscription on the memorial.

This memorial is the focal point of remembrance for the Royal Air Force. The memorial bears the names of more than 20,000 Commonwealth personnel, who died during the Second World War and have no known grave. Unveiled by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II on 17 October 1953, the memorial was designed by Sir Edward Maufe, the Commission's Principal Architect for the United Kingdom after the Second World War.

Some visitors may miss the words painted sky blue above the entrance - ‘Per Ardua Ad Astra’, 'through adversity to the stars' - the RAF's motto.

Malta Memorial

The memorial commemorates almost 2,300 airmen who lost their lives during the Second World War while serving with the Commonwealth air forces, flying from bases in Austria, Italy, Sicily, islands of the Adriatic and Mediterranean, Malta, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, West Africa, Yugoslavia and Gibraltar, and who have no known grave. The memorial was unveiled by Her Majesty The Queen on 3 May 1954.

Alamein Memorial

Panels of the memorial commemorate different areas of service. The Air Forces panels commemorate more than 3,000 airmen of the Commonwealth who died in the campaigns in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Greece, Crete and the Aegean, Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Somalilands, the Sudan, East Africa, Aden and Madagascar, who have no known grave. Those who served with the Rhodesian and South African Air Training Scheme and have no known grave are also commemorated here.