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12 things we learned about the RAF on its 100th anniversary

7. The RAF always had a reputation of being the glamorous wing of the services.
Famous people who have served or completed National Service in the RAF over the years include Richard Burton, Denholm Elliott, Bob Monkhouse, Tony Hancock, Rex Harrison, Warren Mitchell, Frank Muir, Richard Attenborough, Arthur C Clarke, Peter Sellers, Norman Tebbit, Tony Benn, Patrick Moore, Christopher Lee, Bruce Forsyth, Brian Blessed, Roald Dahl, Bill Wyman, Hughie Green, Pam Ayres and Hilary Devey from Dragon’s Den.

8. The Dam Buster raids of May 1943, using the “bouncing bombs” of Barnes Wallis from specially modified Lancasters of 617 Squadron, are regarded as remarkable achievements which certainly disrupted the German economy. However, many historians now question the strategic importance: the bombing of hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr valley caused flooding that killed 700 German civilians and more than 1,000 Soviet prisoners of war.

9. After the formation of Israel in 1948, a three-way air battle broke out between the RAF, the newly-created Israeli Air Force, and the Egyptian Air Force. All three were flying in nearly identical Spitfires, making identification extremely difficult.

10. Prior to 1939, the RAF operated a “colour bar”: signing up was limited to “British subjects of pure European descent”. When it became apparent that there were a shortage of air crew, the RAF started to encourage recruitment from all parts of the Commonwealth, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and the West Indies, as well as volunteers from neutral Ireland and the United States and numerous Nazi-occupied countries of Europe, most notably Poland and Czechoslovakia. During the Battle of Britain, around 20 per cent of pilots (574) were non-British, including 141 Poles and 87 Czechs.

11. The RAF were still fighting the Second World War until August 1946. Following the Japanese surrender in September 1945, the 5,000 remaining Allied prisoners in brutal POW camps in Java came under the control of local Indonesian militia, who were seeking independence from the Dutch. The RAF detachment sent to rescue them would not complete their task for nearly a year.

12. The mathematics of the Battle of Britain remain shocking. The RAF were massively outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, with two British planes for every three German. The average RAF pilot was 20 years old. He had a life expectancy of four weeks, and would often be expected to fly several missions a day, with shifts of up to 15 hours long. From an estimated RAF crew of 3,000, only around half survived the four-month battle between July and October 2940. But the Luftwaffe losses – more than 2,500 servicemen – were even greater, forcing the Germans to withdraw.