His novels are notable for a fine attention to accurate detail in descriptions of places, such as in Air Bridge ( 1951 ), set partially at RAF Gatow, RAF Membury after its closure and RAF Wunstorf during the Berlin Airlift.

Court Line BAC One-Eleven # The One-Eleven 500, 510ED and 475 | BAC One-Eleven 518FG G-AXMJ at RAF Gatow | Berlin Gatow in September 1973.

During the Berlin Airlift ( which lasted from June 1948 until August 1949 ) 10 Sunderlands and two Hythes were used to transport goods from Finkenwerder on the Elbe near Hamburg to isolated Berlin, landing on the Havelsee beside RAF Gatow until it iced over.

BEA's first-ever internal German flight took to the air in September 1946 when one of its DC-3s departed Hamburg Fuhlsbüttel for RAF Gatow in Berlin.

* On 5 April 1948, Vickers Viking G-AIVP operating that day's scheduled flight from RAF Northolt via Hamburg to RAF Gatow in Berlin collided during its approach to RAF Gatow with a Soviet Air Force Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter which had been flying dangerously close while performing aerobatics in the area at the time.

From 1956 to 1990 the Chimunks of the RAF Gatow Station Flight were used for covert reconnaissance by BRIXMIS over the Berlin area.

The last Chipmunks in military service are still operated by the British historic flights-the RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight ( including one of the Gatow aircraft ), the Royal Navy and Army historic flights, to keep their pilots current on tailwheel aircraft.

** RAFVR RFS, No. 8 Sqn, No. 31 Sqn, No. 114 Sqn, No. 275 Sqn, RAF Gatow ( Berlin ) Station Flight, University Air Squadrons, Air Experience Flights ( Air Training Corps ), Battle of Britain Memorial Flight

* April 5 – A Soviet Air Force Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter harassing aircraft flying into West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade collides with a British European Airways Vickers VC. 1B Viking airliner as it is levelling off to land at RAF Gatow in West Berlin.

284 Field Squadron was the first RAF unit to arrive in West Berlin in 1945, to secure RAF Gatow.

Known for most of its operational life as Royal Air Force Station Gatow, or more commonly RAF Gatow, this former British Royal Air Force military airbase is in the district of Gatow in south-western Berlin, west of the Havel river, in the borough of Spandau.

Other surviving features during the entire period of the airfield's use as RAF Gatow ( 1945 – 1994 ) included light bulbs in the main hangars, many of which dated from the 1930s.

On 25 June 1945, 284 Field Squadron, RAF Regiment, arrived at Gatow by land via Magdeburg.

RAF Regiment officers occasionally surveyed Soviet positions by air from Avro Ansons, and the tour of duty of RAF Regiment detachments at Gatow was limited to six months, because of the constant activity occasioned by the Soviet presence and the Berlin Airlift.

The RAF was Britain's weapon of attrition, and flying a fighter plane was the way her sons could serve her best at this point in the war.

The British RAF in the Middle East was equipped with Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars and Morris tenders.

In September 1940 a section of the No. 2 Squadron RAF Regiment Company was detached to General Wavell ’ s ground forces during the first offensive against the Italians in Egypt.

An upgraded version with active radar seeker, called Active Sky Flash was proposed by BAe and Thomson-CSF, but did not receive funding because the RAF opted for other missiles.

The Avro Vulcan was part of the RAF V bomber force

This new design was licensed by the British, who produced ball point pens for RAF aircrew as the Biro ; they found they worked much better than fountain pens at high altitude, the latter being prone to ink-leakage in the decreased atmospheric pressure.

Carl Meinhof was the great-uncle ( the brother of the grandfather ) of Ulrike Meinhof, a founding member of the German Red Army Faction ( RAF ), a left-wing militant group, which operated in West Germany in 1970s and 1980s.

In the early 1960s, the UK was withdrawing its military presence from the Indian Ocean area, not including the base at RAF Gan to the north of Diego Garcia in the Maldives ( which remained open until 1976 ), and agreed to permit the US to establish a Naval Communication Station on one of its island territories there.

Much of this combat was centered around the strategic bombing campaigns of the RAF and the USAAF.

Significant individual contributions to the war effort by Scots included the invention of radar by Robert Watson-Watt, which was invaluable in the Battle of Britain, as was the leadership at RAF Fighter Command of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.

In the Zionist movement the moderate Pro-British ( and British citizen ) Weizmann, whose son died flying in the RAF, was undermined by Britain's anti-Zionist policies.

Similarly, a bomber wing was a Kampfgeschwader ( KG ), a night fighter wing was a Nachtjagdgeschwader ( NJG ), a dive-bomber wing was a Stukageschwader ( StG ), and units equivalent to those in RAF Coastal Command, with specific responsibilities for coastal patrols and search and rescue duties, were Küstenfliegergruppen ( Kü. Fl.

It was not until the concluding months of 1943 that the only realized attempt to build a " true four engined " version of the A-series He 177, the He 177B emerged with only three airworthy prototypes produced by early 1944, some three years after the first flights of the Avro Lancaster prototypes, the most commonly encountered RAF bomber pounding Germany on strategic night raids from 1942 to the end of the war in Europe.

Deliveries of new aircraft were insufficient to meet the drain on resources ; the Luftwaffe, unlike the RAF, was failing to expand its pilot and aircraft numbers.

He was in time for the bombing of Germany, serving on the Handley Page Halifax with No. 76 Squadron RAF, initially at RAF Breighton and then at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor.

In World War II, he volunteered for all services when the war broke out ( the RAF was his first choice owing to the influence of his father's experience ), but was initially rejected because of his father's nationality.

He went on to join Robert Atkin's Shakespearean company in Regent's Park, London, until he was called up for service in the RAF.

He was appearing in a Shakespearean play in doublet and hose in the open-air theatre in London's Hyde Park when two RAF MPs marched on stage and arrested him for desertion.

* 1969 – The first British-built Concorde 002 makes its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford.

The Royal Air Force operates flights from RAF Mount Pleasant to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, England, with a refuelling stop at RAF Ascension Island.

Additionally Britain's use of radar and the advantages of fighting above Britain's home territory allowed the RAF to deny Germany air superiority, saving the British Isles from German invasion and dealing the Axis their first major defeat of the Second World War.

At the British Bomber Command, Dyson and colleagues proposed ripping out two gun turrets from the RAF Lancaster bombers, to cut the catastrophic losses to German fighters in the Battle of Berlin.

Gun camera film shows tracer ammunition from a Supermarine Spitfire Mark I of No. 609 Squadron RAF, flown by Flight Lieutenant J H G McArthur, hitting a Heinkel He 111 on its starboard quarter.

However, the change in emphasis of the bombing from RAF bases to bombing London turned Adler into a strategic bombing operation.

Although Meinhof was not considered to be a leader of the RAF at any time, her involvement in Baader's escape from jail in 1970 and her well-known status as a German journalist led to her name becoming attached to it.

After German reunification in 1990, it was confirmed that the RAF had received financial and logistic support from the Stasi, the security and intelligence organization of East Germany, which had given several members shelter and new identities.

To weaken the organization further the government declared that some RAF inmates would be released if the RAF refrained from violent attacks in the future.

Subsequently the RAF announced their intention to " de-escalate " and refrain from significant activity.

SAC bomber, tanker and reconnaissance aircraft flew numerous conventional bombing, aerial refueling and reconnaissance missions over and near Iraq from RAF Fairford and other bases in Great Britain, Turkey, Akrotiri, Cyprus, Diego Garcia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The UK would thus retain its independent deterrent force, although its control passed from the RAF largely to the Royal Navy.

RAF Predannack Down ( see Predannack Airfield ) was a Second World War airbase, from which Coastal Command squadrons flew anti-submarine sorties into the Bay of Biscay as well as convoy support in the western English Channel.

Minutes later the first salvo of Soviet nuclear weapon strikes NATO targets in Western Europe, including RAF Finningley from Sheffield.

The capture, rather than sinking, of U-570 – the only ship to be captured by an aircraft – on 27 August 1941 by a Lockheed Hudson from RAF Coastal Command was important for determining the fighting capacity of U-boats, although her crew destroyed the Enigma and cipher information.

She flew to the outskirts of Limoges, France on 7 June 1944 ( immediately following D-Day ) from RAF Tempsford.

Upon entering all service all three V bombers were initially painted in an overall silver finish, with the prominent under-nose H2S radomes on the Valiant and Vulcan left in black, however, this silver finish was later changed to one of anti-flash white, the RAF roundels being adjusted in shade, and made paler, to minimise the absorption of energy from the flash of detonating nuclear weapons.

* March 20 – WWII: RAF Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade's bomber is hit over Germany, and he has to bail out without a parachute from a height of over 4, 000 meters.

* July 2 – 6 – British airship R34 makes the first transatlantic flight by dirigible, and the first westbound flight, from RAF East Fortune, Scotland, to Mineola, New York.

Initially the internees were housed, with different paramilitary groups separated from each other, in Nissen huts at a disused RAF airfield that became the Long Kesh Detention Centre.