* George E. H. McElroy ( WWI fighter ace RFC / RAF )

Famous American test pilot and fighter ace General Chuck Yeager ( who, later, first broke the sound barrier ) flew out of RAF Leiston.

* Lt. Col. Lance C. " Wildcat " Wade ( 1915-1944 ), World War II ace with the RAF

' Dutch ' Hugo, C. W. A. Scott ( winner of the MacRobertson Air Race ) who served there with No. 32 Squadron RAF from 1923 to 1926, and the British ace JE " Johnnie " Johnson, later Air Vice-Marshal, who took over the Canadian wing at Kenley in 1943.

The co-pilot, Captain Kenneth Rayment, DFC, was a former RAF flight lieutenant and Second World War flying ace.

In January 1942, Clive Caldwell – the highest-scoring Australian ace of the war – became the first BCATP / EATS graduate to command a RAF squadron ( 112 Sqn ).

He was sent to Sydney, Australia for rehabilitation, where he met Australian ace Clive " Killer " Caldwell and delivered some lectures on operational flying to RAF pilots, newly assigned to the theater.

* Sir George Reid ( RAF officer ) ( 1893 – 1991 ), World War I flying ace in No. 20 Squadron RAF

New Zealanders in the RAF itself included pilots, such as the first RAF ace of the war, Flying Officer Cobber Kain, Alan Deere ( whose book Nine Lives was one of the first post war accounts of combat ) and leaders such as the World War I ace, Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park, who commanded No. 11 Group RAF in the Battle of Britain and went on to the air defence of Malta and, in the closing stages of the war, Commonwealth air units under South East Asia Command, and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham Air Tactical Commander of D-Day.

* RAF fighter ace Wing Commander Douglas Bader was shot down in what recent research suggests was a friendly fire incident.

* James White ( RAF officer ) ( 1893 – 1972 ), World War I Royal Naval Air Service fighter ace

On 9 August 1941, RAF ace Douglas Bader bailed out over St Omer, France.

* John Robert Baldwin ( 1918 – 1952 ), RAF fighter ace of the Second World War

* Johnnie Johnson ( RAF officer ), leading Spitfire ace of World War II, when it was Loughborough College

* Geoffrey Pidcock ( 1897 – 1976 ) – World War I RAF ace

* Captain Alan Rice-Oxley DFC ( 1898 – 1961 ), RAF officer, World War I fighter ace

The American literary scholar Francis Peabody Magoun claimed to be Canadian in order to join the RAF, in which service he achieved ace status.

Serving in the RAF, Braham had received three DSOs, three DFCs, plus the Air Force Cross ( AFC ), and was the top nightfighter ace among British and Commonwealth pilots in the Second World War, credited with 29 1 / 2 ' kills ', one probable and six damaged enemy aircraft.

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.

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.

The RCAF would run the plan in Canada, but to satisfy RAF concerns, Robert Leckie, a senior RAF commander ( at the time in charge of RAF squadrons in Malta ) and a Canadian, was posted to Ottawa as Director of Training.

* Anthony Doonan as Flight Lieutenant Robert Hutchison DFC RAF, wireless operator of " George "

* Robert Shaw as Flight Sergeant John Pulford RAF, flight engineer of " George "

The village is probably best known for its RAF base RAF Honington and for being the birthplace of poet Robert Bloomfield.

Galland also befriended many former enemies, such as RAF aces Robert Stanford Tuck and Douglas Bader.

Robert Stanford Tuck | Robert ' Bob ' Stanford Tuck c. 1941, later to become Commanding Officer of RAF Coltishall

* Robert E. Smith ( c. 1918 – c. 2004 ), American pilot in the RAF and USAF

In October 1937, Robert ( Bob ) J. Dippy, working at Robert Watson-Watt's radar laboratory at RAF Bawdsey, proposed using two synchronized transmitters as the basis for a blind landing system.

• Sgt Robert Strong ( 27 ), Navigator, RAF.

* Robert Gordon ( RAF officer ) ( 1882 – 1954 ), British officer

* Sir Robert Foster ( RAF officer ) ( 1898 – 1973 ), RAF commander during World War II

Rall was then based at RAF Tangmere, where he met the RAF ace Robert Stanford Tuck, with whom he reportedly became close friends.

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.

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 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.