John Buckley - The Royal Air Force: The First One Hundred Years

2TAF Second Tactical Air Force

AMRAAM advanced medium-range air-to-air missile

ASRAAM advanced short-range air-to-air missile

ASV air-to-surface vessel RDF/radar

AWACS airborne warning and control systems

BAE British Aerospace

BEF British Expeditionary Force

CAS Chief of the Air Staff

LRASV long-range air-to-surface vessel RDF/radar

MoD Ministry of Defence

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCO non-commissioned officer

PFI private finance initiative

QRA Quick Reaction Alert

RAF Royal Air Force

RDF radio direction finding

RFC Royal Flying Corps

RNAS Royal Naval Air Service

RPAS remotely piloted air system

SAR search and rescue

SDSR Strategic Defence and Security Review

UKMFTS United Kingdom Military Flying Training System

USAAF United States Army Air Force

USAF United States Air Force

VLR very long range

WRAF Womens Royal Air Force

In 1949 Air Vice Marshal Edgar Kingston-McCloughry published War in Three Dimensions, a short book in which he considered the profound impact air power had brought to bear upon the conduct of war. An Australian fighter ace of the Great War and a senior commander in the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the Second World War, Kingston-McCloughry had witnessed at first hand the manner in which military aviation had transformed the conduct and nature of war, drawing in whole nations and societies. He argued that the classical principles which had previously governed warfare, prior to the emergence of air power, were in need of systematic revision. But in essence Kingston-McCloughrys title, War in Three Dimensions, is enough to capture the essence of the changes he was highlighting; from the First World War onwards, war between great industrial powers had widened and deepened in impact through the emergence of military aviation. Its reach into the lives of civilians, previously spared many of the harsh physical privations of war, and the enormous and very specific demands air power made on economies and societies, had radically altered the relationship between people, government, and armed forces. By the later twentieth century this was exacerbated by the emergence of nuclear weaponry and ultimately global reach. Still further, throughout this period air power had redefined the battlefield, either on land or at sea, in the most radical way yet witnessed in the modern world.

It was against this backdrop that in April 1918 the RAF, the worlds first major independent air arm, was created, essentially to meet the emerging demands of modern air war. The simple fact that the German air offensive against Britain in the summer of 1917 had been a major factor in driving the formation of the RAF, illustrates how vital confronting the new threat that bombing posed to civilians had become. Military aviation in Britain had clearly existed prior to the RAF in the form of the navys Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the armys Royal Flying Corps (RFC), but the formation by a great power of a new separate air arm was a radical innovation, particularly as it occurred in the heat of the Great War. In reality, the immediate impact of creating the RAF was minimal on air operations and the conduct of the warthe RFC was after all in the midst of desperately resisting the German spring offensive in April 1918but it marked the beginnings of a distinctly modern relationship between this new and technologically minded service and the nation it served.