Royal Observer Corps
As a direct result of their efforts during the Battle of Britain the Observer Corps was granted the title Royal by King George VI and became a uniformed volunteer branch of the RAF from April 1941 for the remainder of its existence, retitled the Royal Observer Corps (ROC). The corps would continue as a civilian organisation but wearing a Royal Air Force uniform and administered by Fighter Command.
With their Headquarters at RAF Bentley Priory the ROC remained administered by Fighter Command until 31 March 1968 when responsibility was handed over to the newly formed RAF Strike Command.
The ROC was a defence warning organisation operating in the United Kingdom between 1925 and 31 December 1995 when it was stood down. Initially established for an aircraft recognition and reporting role that lasted through both world wars, the organisation switched to a Cold War nuclear reporting role during the 1950s. The 10,500 ROC volunteers were trained and administered by a small cadre of sixty nine uniformed full-time professional officers under the command of a serving RAF Air Commodore.
Read more about this topic: RAF Fighter Command
Famous quotes containing the words royal, observer and/or corps:
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“I had such a wonderful feeling last night, walking beneath the dark sky while cannon boomed on my right and guns on my left ... the feeling that I could change the world only by being there.”
—Viorica Butnariu, Rumanian student at Bucharest University. letter, Dec. 23, 1989, to American friend. Observer (London, Dec. 31, 1989)
“The Washington press corps thinks that Julie Nixon Eisenhower is the only member of the Nixon Administration who has any credibility—and, as one journalist put it, this is not to say that anyone believes what she is saying but simply that people believe she believes what she is saying ... it is almost as if she is the only woman in America over the age of twenty who still thinks her father is exactly what she thought he was when she was six.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)