Royal Air Force

Dornier Do 17 of the Luftwaffe 1940 without fighter protection in a dogfight (Luftkampf) with a British Supermarine Spitfire fighter: “War reporters managed to take pictures of individual combat phases during a dogfight. An outstanding achievement that demands coolness and fearlessness. The Do 17 keeps plowing its course, while the Spitfire curves downwards after an unsuccessful attack.”

The Royal Air Force or the RAF is the air arm of the British armed forces since 1 April 1918, when the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) were merged.

History

It played a significant role in both world wars: in the first in aerial combat against the Luftstreitkräfte of the German Empire, and in the second, together with the USAAF, by its murderous terror bombings of Germany incinerating around a million non-combatant civilians and destroying over 1000 years of European architectural heritage, for no achievement whatsoever other than barbarism and murder. Possibly the most notorious of these attacks was Dresden. It also bombed and sank several moored German ocean liners being used for accommodation and refugee purposes, murdering those on board.

Between those major conflicts the RAF was kept busy in Mesopotamia (Iraq) where it dropped bombs as well as poison gas on the rebelling Kurds who were also machine-gunned from the air; and on India's North-West Frontier where it supported the British Indian Army in suppressing rebellions in the northern mountainous regions.

See also

• Phoney War
• Battle of Britain
• Bombing of Germany during World War II
  • Bombing of Königsberg in World War II
  • Bombing of Dresden in World War II

References

• The Destruction of Dresden by David Irving, revised edition, Macmillan, London, 1985, ISBN 0-333-40483-1
• Dresden 1945 by Alexander McKee, Granada Publishing, London, 1983, ISBN: 0-583-13686-9.
• Dresden by Frederick Taylor, Bloomsbury, London, 2004, ISBN 0-7475-7078-7
• The Fire: The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945 by Jörg Friedrich, English edition - Columbia University Press, New York and Chichester, West Sussex, England, 2006, ISBN 0-231-13380-4