The Desert Air Force (DAF), also known chronologically as Air Headquarters Western Desert, Air Headquarters Libya, the Western Desert Air Force, and the First Tactical Air Force (1TAF), was an Allied tactical air force initially created from No. 204 Group under RAF Middle East Command in North Africa in 1941 to provide close air support to the British Eighth Army. Throughout World War II, DAF was made up of squadrons from the British Royal Air Force (RAF), the South African Air Force (SAAF), the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), the United States Army Air Force (USAAF), and other Allied air forces.
Read more about Desert Air Force: History, Aircraft, Personnel, Strength, Commanders
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The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
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And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”
—Thomas Gray (1716–1771)
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Mocks me and mocks the desert of my bed.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be more modern. It is written as if the specator should be thinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, or as if the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and wished to detail to them their own experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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They grope the sea for pearls, but more than pearls:
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Every wave is wealth to Daedalus,
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)