The history of the Royal Air Force, the air force of the United Kingdom, spans nearly a century of British military aviation.
The RAF was founded in 1918, toward the end of World War I by merging the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. After the war, the RAF was greatly reduced in size and during the inter-war years it was used to "police" the British Empire. The RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War. During the war it was responsible for the aerial defence of Great Britain, the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and tactical support to the British Army around the world.
During the Cold War, the main role of the RAF was the defence of the continent of Europe against potential attack by the Soviet Union, including holding the UK's nuclear deterrent for a number of years. After the Cold War, the RAF was involved in several large scale operations, including the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War.
Read more about History Of The Royal Air Force: World War II (1939–1945), 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Cold War (1947–1990), Number of Personnel
Famous quotes containing the words history of the, history of, history, royal, air and/or force:
“The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.”
—Lytton Strachey (1880–1932)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“All hail! the pow’r of Jesus’ Name;
Let angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the Royal Diadem,
To crown Him Lord of all.”
—Edward Perronet (1726–1792)
“Now Air is hush’d, save where the weak-ey’d Bat,
With short shrill Shriek flits by on leathern Wing,
Or where the Beetle winds
His small but sullen Horn,”
—William Collins (1721–1759)
“Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a manoeuver, a blow with an agreement.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)