In The Register, Gareth Corfield notes the amusing detail of the RAF’s birthday happening to fall on April 1st by publishing a couple of days early (so nobody thinks he’s pulling their collective legs):
This Sunday marks the 100th birthday of the Royal Air Force – Britain’s military arm for the skies – as a separate Armed Force in its own right. The RAF has been at the forefront of many technological innovations over the last century, many of which are still in use to this day.
From the earliest days of biplanes (and triplanes), through the invention of radar, the jet engine, vertical takeoff tech, and aircraft designs that were decades ahead of their time.
While traditionally these types of “birthday journalism” articles are published on the actual birthday, we at El Reg still reckon it’s a bit weird that the RAF’s official foundation also takes place on April Fool’s Day, so here it is before smart-arses feel compelled to claim this is some kind of windup.
Going back through the history books, the RAF’s main technological achievements include developments in aerial navigation, aircraft sensing and ground-based control, and, somewhat controversially, the jet engine, though the actual milestones for that one are shared with Germany.
[…]
All in all, the RAF has been an aeronautical force for good, with the service developing the basics for many things that commercial passengers today take for granted. Its technological developments and innovations have contributed to making the world both safer and smaller, as aircraft fly ever faster, building upon the principles established and researched by the Air Force. Even those with grievous injuries have been benefited by the RAF, thanks to the pioneering work of the RAF Institute of Aviation Medicine.
Let’s just hope it manages to shrug off the problem of having its birthday on the same day as April Fool’s Day…
Update: Samizdata relates the tale of the 50th anniversary non-celebration.
Today I would like to note one incident in the RAF’s history, which came at the ‘half-way’ mark, when in 1968, (actually on 5th April) after Harold Wilson’s Labour government decided not to commemorate the RAF’s 50th anniversary with a fly-past, and this did not go down well at all. In fact, it went down so badly that one RAF pilot, the heroic Flight Lieutenant Alan Pollock, threw away his career and very nearly his freedom in the ‘Tower Bridge incident‘, when, in protest at the lack of a commemoration, in his Hawker Hunter jet, he ‘buzzed’ the Houses of Parliament. Then on the spur of the moment, going down the Thames towards the sea, he flew under the top span of Tower Bridge at around 400 mph, and also ‘beat up’ a few airfields inverted, before landing, getting arrested but avoiding a court martial after being demobilised on health grounds by superiors eager to avoid the publicity of a trial, which is a weird echo of a similar ruse used in Viktor Suvorov’s ‘The Liberators’ when a Soviet Army soldier’s conduct presented a bureaucratic embarrassment that could not be concealed from higher authority. The jet only just missed hitting the top span of Tower Bridge with its tail, so no harm was done, however, it was close, there was a double-decker bus on the bridge at the time, and a cyclist on the bridge ripped his trousers dismounting in haste. Flt-Lt Pollock gallantly offered to pay for the trousers, but the cyclist declined.
Wikipedia has more detail on the Hawker Hunter Tower Bridge incident.
