Formation The genesis of the RAF Regiment was the creation of
No. 1 Armoured Car Company RAF, formed in Egypt in 1921 for operations in
Iraq, followed shortly afterwards by
No. 2 Armoured Car Company RAF and
No. 3 Armoured Car Company RAF. These were equipped with
Rolls-Royce armoured cars and carried out policing operations throughout the
Middle East in the 1920s.
Second World War ,
Netherlands, during
Operation Infatuate, November 1944 In 1941, during the
Second World War, German airborne forces invaded Crete, then held by Greek, British and Commonwealth forces. The German invasion succeeded in major part because of the failure of the Allied land forces to recognise the strategic importance of the airfields, and hence to defend them adequately. In consequence, the RAF base at Maleme was taken largely intact by German paratroop and glider forces, albeit with heavy casualties. The Germans were then reinforced by air behind allied lines. This led eventually to the loss of the whole island and substantial Allied losses in what became known as the
Battle of Crete. Disappointed with the failure of the British Army to recognise the importance of airfields in modern warfare, Prime Minister Churchill made the RAF responsible for the defence of its own bases and the RAF Regiment was formed on 1 February 1942, with its first headquarters established at
RAF Belton Park,
Grantham,
Lincolnshire. From the start it had 66,000 personnel drawn from the former Defence Squadrons Nos. 701–850. The new regiment was made up of field squadrons equipped with
Morris Light Reconnaissance Cars,
Humber Light Reconnaissance Cars and
Otter Light Reconnaissance Cars. The light anti-aircraft squadrons were originally armed with
Hispano 20 mm cannon and then the
Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. Its role was to seize, secure and defend airfields to enable air operations to take place. Several
parachute squadrons were formed to assist in the capture of airfields, a capability retained by No. II Squadron. It mounted the
King's Guard at
Buckingham Palace for the first time on 1 April 1943. During the War the RAF Regiment grew to a force of over 80,000 men. In late June 1944, with the
British Army fighting in Normandy where it was sustaining heavy losses and at the same time suffering from a severe shortage of manpower, it was decided to transfer 25,000
officers and
men of the RAF Regiment to the army, mostly to the infantry and the
Foot Guards, to be retrained as Infantry to a level capable to conduct Army operations. The Second World War campaign in north-eastern India and northern Burma was fought in jungle and mountains with few or non-existent roads and which facilitated the infiltration of enemy patrols behind front lines. This was overcome by holding defensive "boxes" mainly or entirely supplied by air. The defence of forward airfields close to the main army concentrations was vital to this tactic. A training school and depot for the RAF Regiment was established at
Secunderabad in October 1942, to retrain former ground defence airmen. It had an assault course considered tougher than anything the army had in India. Six field squadrons and seventy AA flights were initially formed, containing 160 officers and 4,000 other ranks. Until mid-1944, the AA flights were equipped only with light machine guns, then with Hispano 20 mm cannon for the rest of the war. Regiment units defended airfields and forward mobile radar units in
Arakan in the
Arakan Campaign in late 1942 and early 1943. During the
Battle of Imphal, all supplies and reinforcements had to be flown in between 29 March and 22 June 1944 with RAF Regiment units providing vital airfield defence. Following the failure of the Japanese
Operation U-Go, it was decided to pursue the shattered remnants of the Japanese 15th Army into Burma during the
monsoon, in average rainfall of per day and rifle flights were sometimes attached to advancing Indian Army and British East African units, to gain experience in the jungle. Units of 1307 Wing were flown into the newly captured and tactically vital
Meiktila airfield on 1 March 1945. Only a roughly box, shared with the army and some United States anti-aircraft artillery, could be held at night and the airfield had to be cleared of enemy each morning before flying could start. As one of the RAF Regiment's proudest battle honours, this three-week battle destroyed the Japanese hold on northern Burma. The RAF Regiment fought as field, armoured car and light anti-aircraft (LAA) squadrons and flights in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy, the Balkans and North Western Europe, as well as 68 LAA squadrons defending the UK against V1 attacks as part of
Operation Diver, alongside the Royal Artillery's HAA and LAA batteries. Amongst other things, RAF Regiment units were the first British forces to reach Paris, amongst the first to enter Brussels, and Squadron Leader Mark Hobden and his force arrested
Hitler's successor as
Führer, Grand Admiral
Karl Doenitz, at his HQ in
Flensburg. On 26 November 1944, a
Me 262A-2a Sturmvogel of III/KG51 based at Hopsten/Rheine near Osnabruck was the first confirmed ground-to-air kill of a jet combat aircraft. The 262 was shot down by a
40/L60 40mm Bofors gun of B.11 Detachment of 2875 Squadron RAF Regiment, at the RAF forward airfield of Helmond, near Eindhoven. Others were lost to ground fire on 17 and 18 December, when the same airfield was attacked at intervals by a total of eighteen Me 262s. The guns of Nos. 2873 and 2875 squadrons RAF Regiment damaged several, causing at least two of them to crash within a few miles of the airfield. In February 1945, Sergeant Pollards's B.6 gun detachment of 2809 Squadron RAF Regiment shot down another Me 262 over the airfield of Volkel. The final appearance of Me 262s over Volkel was in 1945, when yet another fell to 2809's guns. at
Prkos Airfield in
Yugoslavia 1945 On 5 December 1944, twelve RAF Regiment squadrons deployed onto various airfields in southern Greece. They became engaged in fighting with Greek Communist Forces (ELAS) which wished to depose the Greek government at that time. No. 2848 Field Squadron was the first RAF unit to arrive in
West Berlin in 1945 to secure
Luftwaffe Flugplatz Gatow.
Post-war King George VI became
Air Commodore-in-Chief of the regiment in 1947. He later decided to present his
king's colour in 1952, on the 10th anniversary of the RAF Regiment's founding. The king, however, died around this time and
Queen Elizabeth II instead presented the
Queen's Colour a year later. with Rapier missile system The
unilateral declaration of independence by
Rhodesia in November 1965 necessitated support to
Zambia, which desperately needed air defence. In a rapid response,
Javelin fighters were deployed and an RAF Regiment squadron was also deployed from the United Kingdom to provide ground defence. The agility of the Regiment was demonstrated in its ability to embark 51 Squadron RAF Regiment in six hours from the call to deploy. At the eastern end of the Empire, flights from RAF Regiment squadrons based in Singapore deployed to Hong Kong in 1968 to help maintain security and confidence. The RAF Regiment continued to be involved in Hong Kong into the mid-1970s providing protection at both
RAF Kai Tak and at the radar station at
Tai Mo Shan. In 1974, the
Rapier surface-to-air missile system entered service with the RAF Regiment, and equipped four squadrons protecting four RAF airfields in Germany. Detachments from the German Rapier Squadrons, particularly from
RAF Gutersloh, deployed to San Carlos beach-head during the
Falklands conflict to provide anti-aircraft cover. Light armoured squadrons, equipped with
FV101 Scorpion and
FV107 Scimitar light tracked vehicles, continued to be operated into the 1980s. Also from the 1980s, units such as 19 Squadron were equipped with Rapier and tasked with defending USAF airbases such as
RAF Upper Heyford. Four RAF Regiment personnel were killed by the IRA, all in 1988 and 1989 - one killed by hostile fire in Northern Ireland, the rest by snipers or car bombs in Europe. In July 2004, it was announced that the role of providing ground-based air defence was to be transferred to the British Army's
Royal Artillery and the four Royal Air Force Regiment air defence squadrons were to be disbanded. The RAF Regiment saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Leaving aside those injured, seriously or otherwise, five RAF Regiment gunners were killed in Iraq (one in a firefight, three, including a member of the RAuxAF, in a single mortar strike, and one in a road traffic incident) and five were killed in Afghanistan (one due to hostile fire, four due to IEDs, including one 51 year old member of the RAuxAF, the oldest member of the British Armed Forces to die in Afghanistan) with an additional man dying in an accident in Cyprus after leaving Afghanistan. ("Wimik"), stopped on a road while conducting a combat mission near Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, in 2010 In 2011, as part of the
Strategic Defence and Security Review, it was announced that, from December 2011, the
CBRN role undertaken by the
Joint CBRN Regiment, a combined Army/RAF unit, would be transferred to the RAF Regiment (as lead service) under the new Defence CBRN Wing, formed from
26 Squadron,
27 Squadron and
2623 (Auxiliary) Squadron. The army retained involvement through the continued use of the
Royal Yeomanry to provide trained battlefield casualty replacements. In 2016, this decision was reversed with the announcement the CBRN role would be handed back to the British Army in 2020. In November 2013, The Queen's Colour (63), 1 and 27 Squadrons had their new colours presented. However, 16, 37 and 48 squadrons were disbanded. In July 2017,
Prince Harry visited RAF Honington on behalf of
The Queen to present a new
Colour to the RAF Regiment. The new colour was to celebrate the 75th birthday of the formation of the Regiment in 1942. == Structure in 1989 ==