Number of Personnel
Following the end of World War I, the RAF was greatly reduced in size and only rebuilt in significant number in the years immediately pre-ceding World War II. At its peak during World War II, there were over one million RAF servicemen. Following the demobilization after World War II, the RAF has steadily declined in numbers.
| Year | 1918 | 1951 | 1975 | 1985 | 1993 | 1997 | 2005/2006 | 2009 | 2011 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular | 316,170 | 148,900 | 95,000 | 93,400 | 80,900 | 56,900 | 48,700 | 43,800 | 40,090 |
| National Service | N/A | 88,900 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Regular Reserve | N/A | N/K | N/K | 29,800 | 46,100 | 45,400 | 35,000 | 35,160 | 5,120 |
| Volunteer Reserve | N/A | 18,100 | N/K | 1,200 | 1,800 | 1,400 | 1,400 | 1,480 | 1,360 |
Read more about this topic: History Of The Royal Air Force
Famous quotes containing the words number of, number and/or personnel:
“I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“Strange goings on! Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight. What he did was butter a piece of toast. We are too familiar with the language of action to notice at first an anomaly: the ‘it’ of ‘Jones did it slowly, deliberately,...’ seems to refer to some entity, presumably an action, that is then characterized in a number of ways.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“This woman is headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self- opinionated.”
—Report by Personnel Officer at I.C.I., rejecting Mrs. Thatcher for a job in 1948.