X-Nico

22 unusual facts about Royal Air Force


Anthony Quiney

As a young man, Quiney performed his national service as a radar technician in the Royal Air Force, and later in life he realized a dream of piloting a restored Supermarine Spitfire.

Arcadia, Florida

Carlstrom Field, one of several satellite fields in the Fort Myers Area, also trained pilots for the Royal Air Force until its closing in 1945.

At Mrs. Lippincote's

Julia and the others have joined Roddy, who is an officer in the Royal Air Force.

Caerwent

Between 1967 and 1993 this was used as a storage station for the Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force; since that time it has been used as an army training facility and on occasion as a filming location for large scale productions such as Captain America: The First Avenger.

Cecil Lambert

In 1919 Lambert was seconded to the recently established Royal Air Force where he served as Director of Personnel.

Dawee Chullasapya

The young officer was soon enrolled in bombing and training courses with the RAF and USAAF, and returned two years later to become Commanding Officer of the 3rd Fighter Squadron, whose base was at Don Muang.

De Havilland Ghost

During development, the Royal Air Force also asked for an improved version of the de Havilland Vampire with greater load carrying capacity and thus a larger engine.

De Havilland Spectre

It was one element of the intended mixed powerplant for combination rocket-jet interceptor aircraft for the Royal Air Force, such as the Saunders-Roe SR.53.

Dommartin-Lettrée

The church is to be found in a central position in the village and the Commonwealth war graves of five airmen of the Royal Air Force and two of the Royal Canadian Air Force lie in the churchyard immediately behind the church.

Edgardo Vaghi

As a Second Lieutenant (Sottotenete in Italian), Vaghi fought against the Royal Air Force in Greece in 1941 which damaged his fighter plane.

Geoffrey Tindal-Carill-Worsley

Air Cdre Geoffrey Nicolas Ernest Tindal-Carill-Worsley CB CBE RAF (8 June 1908 - 28 April 1996) was a Royal Air Force officer.

Leonard Osborn

He joined the Royal Air Force in July 1940, where he sang in many military concerts.

Luqa

The Royal Air Force established a base with runways which later on evolved as a civilian airport.

Machrihanish

Although still available to the Royal Air Force, the former airbase has been taken over by the especially-formed Machrihanish Airbase Community Company.

Norman Tunna

Ignoring the bombing Tunna continued his work, marshalling a goods train where the main freight being carried was high explosive bombs for use by the Royal Air Force.

Operation Battleaxe

The Allied response was restricted primarily to harassment by the Royal Air Force.

Operation Horev

On the same day the Israeli Air Force shot down five RAF Spitfires on patrol in the area, killing two pilots and taking two more prisoner.

R. J. Hollingdale

He was called up to the Royal Air Force at a young age in the late 1940s, as part of his National Service, for two years before returning to journalism.

RAF Hospital Wegberg

The former Royal Air Force Hospital Wegberg, commonly abbreviated to RAF(H) Wegberg, was a Royal Air Force military hospital located in Wegberg, near the city of Mönchengladbach, in Germany.

Rattan, Oklahoma

British pilots operating from a Royal Air Force base in Texas crashed into White Rock Mountain and Big Mountain, killing four crew men.

Sector clock

Later, during the Second World War they played a significant role in the Battle of Britain and continued to be used by the Royal Air Force and Royal Observer Corps (ROC) as simple clocks and keepsakes, until the end of the Cold War period.

Union Airways

Union Airways were founded by Major Allister Miller, a World War I flying ace, who had recruited some 2000 South Africans for service in the Royal Air Force.


Alastair Ogilvy

Squadron Leader Charles Alexander "Alistair" Ogilvy (30 November 1915 – 23 February 1995) was a British Royal Air Force officer who flew with Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain but due to records being lost during World War II was not recognised as one of The Few until after his death.

Albert Hugh Smith

During World War II, he enlisted in the RAF as an intelligence officer and in 1941 joined the Scientific Intelligence Unit of the Air Ministry under R V Jones, ending with the rank of Wing Commander.

Annandale Way

He was the commander of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and is generally credited with playing a crucial role in Britain's defence, and hence, the defeat of Hitler's plan to invade Britain.

Anne Baker

Anne Salmond was born just before the outbreak of World War I, the daughter of Geoffrey Salmond who later became the professional head of the Royal Air Force.

Arctic Star

Fleet Air Arm personnel, not qualified by sea service, may qualify under the criteria applicable to Royal Air Force personnel.

Aston University Engineering Academy

Business partners of Aston University Engineering Academy include E.ON, Goodrich Corporation, National Grid plc, PTC and the Royal Air Force.

Barry Cole

Apart from two years (1970–1972) as Northern Arts Fellow in Literature at the universities of Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and two years (1955–1957) in the RAF as a National Serviceman, he worked until 1995 as an editor at the Central Office of Information, and is now a freelance editor and writer.

Bell P-59 Airacomet

Royal Air Force received one aircraft, becoming RG362/G, in exchange for a Gloster Meteor I EE210/G.

Bob Judson

Air Commodore Bob Judson RAF is a senior serving Royal Air Force Officer and was the first Station Commander of RAF Coningsby of the Eurofighter Typhoon-era.

Bodø Airport

On May 26, 1940 three Royal Air Force Gloster Gladiators, led by Rhodesian-born Flight Lieutenant Caesar Hull, landed and made the first airborne defence for the city.

Conchita Marquita Lolita Pepita Rosita Juanita Lopez

Conchita Marquita Lolita Pepita Rosita Juanita Lopez is a 1942 novelty song first recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra and later by Bing Crosby with the Vic Schoen Orchestra, Tommy Tucker and his Orchestra and the Royal Air Force Dance Orchestra.

Coole Pilate

The parish had a platoon in the Home Guard during the Second World War, which guarded the canal bridges and reinforced the RAF at the nearby Hack Green Radar Station.

Crécy-en-Ponthieu

During the Battle of France, the plan seems to have been to deploy RAF squadrons of Bristol Blenheim light bombers there, but it is not clear how intensively the airfield was used.

De Winton, Alberta

During the Second World War, a Royal Air Force pilot training school was located at the Royal Canadian Air Force air station at De Winton (today's De Winton/South Calgary Airport).

Defence College of Communications and Information Systems

The College consists of a headquarters based at Blandford Camp in Dorset, the Royal Navy CIS Training Unit at HMS Collingwood, Fareham, Hampshire, The Royal School of Signals at Blandford Camp and the Royal Air Force Number 1 Radio School, collocated with the headquarters of the Defence College of Aeronautical Engineering at Cosford, of which the Aerial Erector School at RAF Digby is a part.

Edward Michael S.

After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he began musical studies at the Guildhall School of Music where he learned composition.

Finningley

The 2,741 metre long runway, currently the second longest in the north of England, was sufficiently large to take even Concorde, and in the period after the closure of the RAF airfield there were several campaigns to turn Finningley into a commercial airport for the unserved South Yorkshire region (as well as Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire).

Frank Lilley

On 9 November 1959, Lilley was one of four Scottish MPs on a British European Airways Viscount which was involved in a near miss with a Royal Air Force Pembroke transport.

George E. Stratemeyer

One of Stratemeyer's favorite cartoons showed him sitting at his desk surrounded by pictures of his eight bosses (Stillwell, Mountbatten, Gen. George C. Marshall, Chiang, Arnold, Royal Air Force Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, Major General Daniel I. Sultan, and FDR), all of whom could give him orders in one or another of his capacities.

Heinkel He 162

This was despite the fact that the factory in Wuppertal making Tego film plywood glue — used in a substantial number of late-war German aviation designs whose airframes were meant to be constructed mostly from wood — had been bombed by the Royal Air Force and a replacement had to be quickly substituted, without realizing that the replacement adhesive would turn out to be highly corrosive to the wooden parts it was intended to be fastening.

Herbert Lütje

Among them was a Royal Air Force (RAF) Avro Lancaster from No. 57 Squadron piloted by Pilot Officer Jan Bernand Marinus Haye on a mission to bomb the Škoda Works at Plzeň.

Identification friend or foe

When mounted in an RAF Mosquito, the "Perfectos" device revealed the position of any German nightfighters fitted with an FuG 25a.

Imagery intelligence

In 1939 Sidney Cotton and Flying Officer Maurice Longbottom of the RAF suggested that airborne reconnaissance may be a task better suited to fast, small aircraft which would use their speed and high service ceiling to avoid detection and interception.

John Bussey

Group Captain John Bussey, OBE (1895-1979) was in charge of Reconnassance for the British Royal Air Force during WWII.

Josef Priller

He made his first victory claims in May 1940 over Dunkirk versus Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters.

Leuchars

The town is now best known for the adjoining Royal Air Force base, RAF Leuchars, which was established in 1920, and is home to the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Louis Tancred

Louis Jnr instead joined the Royal Air Force and, while working as a flight instructor, was killed aged 34 in a plane crash at the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire.

McKnight Boulevard

It is named for William Lidstone McKnight (1918-1941), a World War II flying ace with the Royal Air Force who had spent much of his childhood in Calgary before disappearing shortly after the Battle of Britain in combat.

Naval Air Technical Training Center Ward Island

The Royal Air Force had recently started Training School #31 for this same purpose in Clinton, Ontario, and a small group of U.S. naval officers was sent there in mid-1941 to gather information for a similar school to be located on the campus of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.

PULHHEEMS

PULHHEEMS is tri-service, which is to say that it is used by the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.

RAF Chapel

At the eastern end of Westminster Abbey in the magnificent Lady Chapel built by King Henry VII is the RAF Chapel dedicated to the men of the Royal Air Force who died in the Battle of Britain between July and October 1940.

RAF Hinaidi

Royal Air Force Station Hinaidi was a British Royal Air Force station near Baghdad in the Kingdom of Iraq.

Reg Johnson

After pilot training he was sent to Britain and attached to the RAF in which he flew Lancaster bombers with 218 Squadron.

Richard Hough

After leaving school, he joined the RAF (Royal Air Force) at the beginning of World War II and received his initial flight training at an airfield not far from Hollywood.

Service Prosecuting Authority

It was formed on 1 January 2009 by the merger of the separate prosecuting authorities of the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force and is headed by Andrew Cayley QC, a civil servant, as Director Service Prosecutions.

Shortstown

The village was originally built by Short Brothers for its workers, but evolved into a settlement for people working at the RAF Cardington base.

Siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem

On May 10, the thirteen men left the church, and were greeted by Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador to Israel, thirty members of the Royal Military Police, and a Royal Air Force doctor.

Ternhill

Ternhill is a village in Shropshire, England, notable for its Royal Air Force training airfield ("Clive Barracks"/RAF Ternhill) which was the site of a bombing by the Provisional IRA on 20 February 1989 in which one person was injured.

The Degenhardts

Karl Degenhardt, the patriarch of a family in Lubeck, leads his wife and five children through the opening stages of Second World War culminating in the Bombing of Lübeck on 28 March 1942 by the Royal Air Force.

Theodore McEvoy

Air Chief Marshal Sir Theodore Neuman McEvoy KCB CBE RAF (21 November 1904 – 19 September 1991) was a senior Royal Air Force officer during World War II who held high command in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Upavon

The site was originally constructed around 1912 as a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) base, and became the home of the RFC Central Flying School on 19 June 1912, later to be the RAF Central Flying School upon formation of the Royal Air Force.

Warrenpoint

On 15 July 1944, two Royal Air Force aircraft (an Airspeed Oxford (LX 598) and a Miles Martinet (MS626) from No. 290 Squadron RAF) were taking part in a civil defence demonstration at Warrenpoint.

Waterbeach

A Royal Air Force station, RAF Waterbeach, was built on the northern edge of the village in 1940, operating under RAF Bomber Command.