he RAF celebrated its actual 100th
birthday on April 1, 2018, quietly.
There were a few TV documentaries
aired on and around the big day, and there
was a Founders’ Day Service at St Clement
Danes, the official church of the air force,
followed by a reception at the Royal Courts
of Justice, concluding with the launch of the
‘RAF100’ baton relay. A host of relatively
small events followed throughout the summer,
with a 100-aircraft flypast over the Mall and
Buckingham Palace on July 10 representing
the pinnacle of the centenary celebration.
Press coverage has been friendly (even
slightly sycophantic and hagiographic),
echoing the official line and seemingly
helping to “commemorate, celebrate and
inspire”, as the official motto has it.
No-one seemed to want to spoil the party by
asking awkward questions, so the proud but
inaccurate claim that this was “the biggest
(flypast) ever undertaken by the Royal Air
Force” went unchallenged. In fact, the Queen’s
Coronation flypast on June 2, 1953 consisted
of 168 fighters (144 RAF Meteors and 24
Royal Canadian Air Force Sabres), while the
Queen’s Coronation Review at Odiham on July
15, 1953 saw a flypast by 641 aircraft! More
recently, the Silver Jubilee Review at Finningley
in 1977 witnessed flypasts by more than 120
aircraft on each of two successive days.
A 100-aircraft flypast, is, in short, a
relatively modest effort, though in relative
terms, it will no doubt be a challenge for
today’s much smaller service to mount.
But as the coloured smoke from the July
10 flypast over London dissipates – along
with the goodwill towards the ‘birthday boy’- AFM echoes the question that it posed
on the cover of the October 2007 issue,
as the service neared its 90 birthday:
‘Is the RAF still broken?’
Back then, the big questions were about
what was called ‘overstretch’, sustainability
(whether the RAF could achieve the tasks
set without breaking harmony guidelines –
which put suggested limits on deployment
frequency and duration), readiness, retention
and about the mismatch between actual
operations and planning assumptions. It
talked about the RAF’s diminishing force
structure and the fact that the UK was
spending 2.2% of GDP on defence – which
it said was the lowest proportion since 1930.
It criticised what it called “the ill-conceived
rush towards PFIs and PPPs, and towards
availability-based contracting,” which it averred
would see the loss of key competences and
skills among the uniformed engineers.
In 2007, the RAF included 15 frontline fast
jet squadrons (two Typhoon, three Tornado
F3, seven Tornado GR4, two Harrier, and one
Jaguar), while it still had 18 Nimrod MR2s for
maritime patrol duties, and a ‘gold standard’
military search and rescue provision.Slimmed-down service
Today the RAF is significantly smaller than it
was 11 years ago, and manpower remains a
major problem. While overstretch is no longer
the favoured buzzword, and while harmony
guidelines may not be being technically broken
(if indeed they still exist) today’s manning
crisis is in part the product of an operational
tempo that demands very frequent operationalhttp://www.airforcesmonthly.com #365 AUGUST 2018 // 69
Left: The first UK Lightning to arrive on British soil,
ZM137 (BK-03), leads a pair of US Marine Corps
F-35Bs and two Typhoon FGR4s from No 1 (Fighter)
Squadron during the F-35’s maiden visit to the UK,
in summer 2016. While the RAF is understandably
enthusiastic about the advances offered by the new
supersonic stealth fighter, the wider picture shows
a force with just eight fast jet squadrons – one of
them not yet operational. Far left: The way it was,
part one. A portion of the aircraft assembled for
the Coronation Review by HM Queen Elizabeth II
at RAF Odiham on July 15, 1953. The culmination
of seven months’ planning can be seen in this view
of the immaculately parked Meteors, Vampires,
Shackletons and others as they await inspection
with their crews. It remains the UK’s largest display
of military air power. All photos Crown CopyrightT