III.

World War II

During World War II the RAF played a vital tactical role and was in combat from the first day of the war to the last. At the beginning of the war it had 2,000 aircraft. Initially, the Advanced Air Striking Force was posted to France and suffered heavy losses—especially of its obsolete aeroplane, the Fairey Battle—when the Germans attacked the Low Countries and France in June 1940. Following the surrender of France and the evacuation of the British Army from Dunkirk, the defence of the British Isles rested with RAF Fighter Command. The ensuing Battle of Britain brought about the defeat of the Luftwaffe and a much-needed respite from the threat of invasion allowed a period of recovery for Britain's forces.

In 1941 the emphasis moved to offensive operations; these included the first major raids by Bomber Command on German industrial and civilian targets by night, and fighter and light-bomber attacks on the mainland of occupied France. In May 1943, 617 Squadron, under the command of Wing Commander Guy Gibson, delivered the newly developed “bouncing bomb”, invented by Barnes Wallis, against three of Germany's dams in the Ruhr, thereby flooding vital industrial areas. In North Africa, the Western Desert Air Force came into being as a tactical arm to work with the armies in the field. So successful was this arm of the RAF that when the time came to develop plans for the D-Day invasion of northern France, a 2nd Tactical Air Force (2TAF) was formed to operate in support of the allied armies. Operating in the latter half of 1943, 2TAF attacked enemy communications, coastal defences, and troop concentrations. Mosquito aircraft also attacked pin-point targets, including the Gestapo jail at Amiens on February 8, 1944 in order to free French Resistance workers, and the launch sites of the German V-1 rocket. Once the Allied invasion of northern Europe was under way, the rocket-firing Hawker Typhoon performed as flying artillery against the armoured units of the Axis powers. In the theatre of war in East Asia, the Japanese Air Force was regarded as a formidable threat following its attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. However, the balance was redressed with the adoption of new methods of fighting in this theatre, particularly in using RAF aircraft to re-supply ground troops from the air, and to re-equip with modern aircraft, greatly helped the Burma campaign to succeed, as did the formation of the 3rd Tactical Air Force (3 TAF). At the end of the war bomber crews were used to make food drops to the starving population of the Netherlands, and, for repatriating newly liberated prisoners of war.