II.

World War I and the Inter-War Period

The RAF came into being on April 1, 1918 following the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. While this had little effect on day-to-day operations, the latter months of World War I saw the formation of the RAF's Independent Force, a strategic wing set up to attack German industrial targets. In the inter-war period the RAF contracted dramatically from its wartime position of strength and was reorganized into 11 commands: 5 at home, and 6 overseas. At home the RAF was responsible for the air defence of Great Britain, coastal protection, cooperation with the Royal Navy, and training. It also developed long-range flights, thereby pioneering air routes which were to be exploited commercially and which would eventually link the British Empire. It also became involved in policing actions (known as Air Control), which were conducted on the north-western frontier of British India, Transjordan, Iraq, and the Sudan. In 1929 the RAF performed the first air evacuation of civilians, when 586 people were rescued from the besieged city of Kabul in Afghanistan.

During this period RAF officers became known for their flying achievement record. John William Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown flew non-stop across the Atlantic in 1919; RAF aircraft broke records for duration flying to distant places such as Australia and South Africa, and an RAF team won the Schneider Trophy seaplane air race outright in 1931. The RAF began belatedly to modernize, and by the time of the Munich Crisis of September 1938, the biplane, on which the RAF hitherto relied, had been replaced by the first examples of a new breed of monoplane fighters—the Hurricane and Spitfire.