Talk:History of the Royal Air Force

RAF kills post-World War II was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 31 March 2010 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into History of the Royal Air Force. The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the History of the Royal Air Force article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1

Military history: Aviation / British / European / World War I / World War II

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion met

Associated task forces:
/
	Military aviation task force
	British military history task force
	European military history task force
	World War I task force
	World War II task force

Aviation

This article is within the scope of the Aviation WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.AviationWikipedia:WikiProject AviationTemplate:WikiProject Aviationaviation articles

This article has not yet been checked against the criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar and style: not checked Supporting materials: not checked	To fill out this checklist, please add the following code to the template call: \| b1<!--Referencing and citation--> = <yes/no> \| b2<!--Coverage and accuracy --> = <yes/no> \| b3<!--Structure --> = <yes/no> \| b4<!--Grammar and style --> = <yes/no> \| b5<!--Supporting materials --> = <yes/no> assessing the article against each criterion.

British Empire

	British Empire portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject British Empire, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of British Empire on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.British EmpireWikipedia:WikiProject British EmpireTemplate:WikiProject British EmpireBritish Empire articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

This article is written in British English with Oxford spelling (colour, realize, organization, analyse; note that -ize is used instead of -ise) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Inter-war naval air power point of view problems

The current paragraph is problematic and written from one point of view:

Unfortunately the creation of the RAF had a serious impact upon the development of naval airpower in Britain. The removal of personnel left the Royal Navy (RN) without the necessary experienced personnel to properly integrate airpower into its doctrine. It was only with the return of the RNAS in the form of the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) to Admiralty control in 1939 that some of these problems were rectified. Worse, the RAF staff's fixation with strategic bombardment - an unproven theoretical concept which was adopted primarily to defend it's position vis-a-vis the other services - meant that the maritime dimension received little attention and equipment. This left the FAA and RN with substandard and unpowered aircraft too few in number to properly fight the World War. As the RN was the crucial component of Britain's defences, this had serious implications for her ability to fight the war.

The RAF's view at the time, chiefly led by Trenchard was that the "air is one and indivisible" and that it was part of the role of the RAF to operate the naval cooperation squadrons and develop naval airpower doctrine. The above paragraph fails to explicitly mention that the Fleet Air Arm was created and developed by the RAF and the importance of strategic bombing has been hotly debated and cannot be fairly summed up by the one-sided statement above. The statement that "the RN was the crucial component of Britain's defences" is certainly not generally accepted. Greenshed (talk) 20:34, 4 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That the FAA was developed by the RAF is irrelevant - that it was returned to the RN in 1939 points out that putting naval air in the RAF's hands caused it to have arrested development. Contrast this to the situation in Japan or even more the USA where navies owned their air services and the implications are obvious. The RAF - as Till shows - failed to give due attention to these very issues (naval co-operation and doctrine development) and 'dual control' led to failure. Trenchard's concept of undivisible air was purely an attempt to fight off Army and Navy attacks on his patrimony. This statement is supported by refereed material. Furthermore, to suggest that the RN was anything other than the crucial component of Britain's defences is misleading on several points. (i) recent research has shown that it was the Navy, not the RAF which deterred German invasion in 1940. (ii) Britain relied on imports of raw materials and manufactured goods to fight and win the war. Severing of these supplies by Axis naval units would have meant that Britain would have been unable to continue to prosecute the war - indeed her population would ultimately have starved as she could not feed herself, let alone supply sufficient oil etc. Thus the Battle of the Atlantic was the key campaign to maintain Britain as a fighting force. Whilst Coastal Command was in the hands of the RAF it should have been Naval - the reason it was not returned to the Navy along with the FAA is entirely political. It too was starved of the best aircraft before and during the war, and went to war with obsolescent aircraft. (iii) strategic bombardment failed both to deter the Germans for launching the war and failed to knock Britain out of it. Under far heavier bombardment in 1944-5 Germany fought on (it did not reach full potential until the H-bomb). Thus we can argue that strategic bombardment and defences against it were not crucial (although they were important) aspects of Britain's defences in the war. The same could be said of the Army. Both these services helped win the war but only the RN could have lost it, as was true in WWI where Jellicoe was the only man who could have lost the war in an afternoon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toddy1980 (talk • contribs) 21:35, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps we can break this up into several points:

Please sign your comments with ~~~~
This article is about the history of the RAF, such things as the detail of the performance of the FAA during WW2 are out of scope.
The purpose of this talk page is to work out how to improve the article.
Reliably sourced views that are critical of the RAF can be included but where there is no widespread agreement, then other reliably sourced views need to be included for balance.
The fact that the FAA was developed by the RAF is wholly relevant to an article on the history of the RAF.
It think that it worth contrasting your words "recent research has shown that it was the Navy, not the RAF which deterred German invasion in 1940" with the more balanced statement from the lead section of the Battle of Britain article ("Neither German Führer Adolf Hitler nor his High Command of the Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) believed it possible to carry out a successful amphibious assault on Britain until the RAF had been neutralised. Some historians, such as Derek Robinson, have argued an invasion could not have succeeded; the massive superiority of the Royal Navy over the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) would have made Sealion a disaster and the Luftwaffe would have been unable to prevent decisive intervention by British cruisers and destroyers, even with air superiority.") The way to proceed should be independent of your view (or mine) on the relative merits of air forces and navies - we should aim to describe any debate, not to have it.

Greenshed (talk) 19:05, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks - I accept your point of view generally, there is need for a recognition in this article that a debate exists about what impact the founding of the RAF had and why it was opposed. --Toddy1980 (talk) 16:35, 17 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Smuts Report

The red link to the Smuts Report was recently removed. The Smuts Report (or possibly reports as I believe it was published in several documents) was historically important as it paved the way for the creation of the World's first independent air force. Although I have read a fair amount of analysis on the report, I have yet to get hold of a copy. Does anyone know a source? This reference might form the basis for starting the article. Greenshed (talk) 00:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Number of personnel

Any sources on numbers of RAF personnel during the first half of the 20th century would be useful. Greenshed (talk) 22:59, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Malayan Emergency

The current coverage on the Malayan Emergency is sparse and could stand some improvement. Any expert input would be welcome. Greenshed (talk) 05:51, 15 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on History of the Royal Air Force. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070222132627/http://www.remuseum.org.uk/specialism/rem_spec_aero.htm to http://www.remuseum.org.uk/specialism/rem_spec_aero.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 00:22, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 9 external links on History of the Royal Air Force. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 08:54, 17 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A statement in the WW2 history section

"The main RAF effort during the war was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany."

I do not fully understand the RAF war effort in WW2, and am not really qualified to make comment on this statement, but it seems to be very authoritative for something that is not sourced. From what I understood, the RAF served in multiple theatres. They fought over France prior to the surrender there. Over Britain against Luftwaffe raids. Over Italy, Greece, North Africa etc. This is a number of theatres, and while I understand that the casualties from strategic bombing, and the effect on Third Reich industry may have been significant, I wonder if this is perhaps not an encyclopedic thing to say in light of the successes of the RAF in aerial combat?--Senor Freebie (talk) 11:39, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Strategic bombing pre-WW2

This section gets just 1½ lines, despite the formation of Bomber Command in 1936, and the pre-war career of ‘Bomber’ Harris in 58 Squadron and later in Palestine, of which there is no mention. Valetude (talk) 19:13, 6 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]