ISBN 0-85052-852-6
166 pages

Acknowledgements; Preface; Prologue; Bibliography; photos; maps; lists of units; Epilogue; Index

   Although far better known for Spitfires, the Battle of Britain, Bomber Harris, and night attacks over Germany, the Royal Air Force also fielded its own ground forces. While the Luftwaffe actually activated an array of ground combat divisions for use in the front lines, the Royal Air Force organized the RAF Regiment to provide ground security and anti-aircraft defenses for airfields.
   At the beginning of the Second World War, official doctrine called for the British Army to provide ground defenses for the RAF, but in 1940 it became apparent that when Army priorities conflicted with RAF needs, troops on airfield duty were often summoned elsewhere, leaving RAF bases defenseless. After the fall of France, during the period when the British expected a German airborne and amphibious invasion at any time, leaving RAF airfields completely vulnerable was not seen as the best approach to defeating the landings. Consequently, the Air Force began forming "ground defense squadrons" and "independent anti-aircraft flights" utilizing whatever weapons and airmen could be mustered. By January 1942 the RAF counted 150 such "squadrons" and 335 "flights" at airfields scattered throughout the UK.

   Although the ground defence squadrons were based on the model of an Army infantry company, they had only personal weapons and lacked the heavier support weapons with which the infantry units were equipped. The anti-aircraft flights were scaled for between twelve and twenty-four .303" machine guns of various types on a variety of mountings, but these did not present a real deterrent, let alone a serious threat, to enemy aircraft attacking at anything other than very low level within a few hundred yards of a static anti-aircraft machine-gun position.

   In February 1942 these more or less ad hoc formations were institutionalized with the official creation of the RAF Regiment, which was officially charged with supplying the manpower, weapons, and formations to protect RAF bases at home and in the war theaters abroad. This led to much expansion and reorganization.

   The first attempts at structuring the establishments of the Regiment's combat units were obscured by the imagined need to match unit capabilities to a variety of roles and the results seemed to bear out the old adage that a camel is a horse which has been designed by a committee. There were to be no less than three types of field squadron: the 'standard' field squadron had an anti-aircraft flight, two rifle flights - only one of which was 'mobile' - a support flight and an armoured car flight; the 'higher' field squadron had a third rifle flight added, while the 'lower' field squadron had only the anti-aircraft flight and two rifle flights. There were also two other versions of the so-called 'independent' anti-aircraft flight: the 'special' flight consisted of half a rifle flight and two anti-aircraft half-flights, whereas the 'composite' flight was composed of three half-flights, each of riflemen, anti-aircraft guns and armoured cars.
   Fortunately, this confusing pattern was swept away by common sense in October 1942, after which only two basic types of unit remained in being: the field squadron of seven officers and 178 airmen grouped in three rifle flights, a support weapons flight and an armoured car flight, and the independent anti-aircraft flight of two officers and fifty-eight airmen manning anti-aircraft machine guns, which were later replaced by 20mm Hispano cannons. The independent AA flights in the UK, the Middle East and the Mediterranean were formed into LAA squadrons of eight officers and 162 airmen from May 1943 onwards, and were progressively re-equipped with Bofors 40mm guns to replace the 20mm Hispanos. In the Far East, however, the shortage of Bofors 40mm guns resulted in the retention of the 20mm Hispano gun as the standard weapon of the LAA squadrons in that theatre until the end of the war.
   In 1944 an appraisal of the role of the Regiment in the forthcoming invasion of North-West Europe was made following the experience gained in the campaigns in the Middle East. This led to a further reorganization of the field squadrons assigned to the Second Tactical Air Force which involved removing their armoured car flights and concentrating the flights in separate armoured car squadrons, leaving the truncated field squadrons to be designated as rifle squadrons, each with three rifle flights and a support weapons flight of 3" mortars. The Mediterranean campaign had proved that command and control of two or more squadrons operating together in the field required a wing headquarters to control them operationally, and a number of such headquarters were established in the United Kingdom on the lines of those which were already in being in overseas theatres.

   The remainder of Kingsley Oliver's book covers the deployment of RAF Regiment formations in action in the UK (notably against the V weapons in the later stages of the war), during Operation Torch and the campaign in Tunisia, in the Middle East (with an especially interesting section on the RAF Regiment in the Aegean operations during 1943), in Italy, in Greece during 1944-1945, in North West Europe during 1944-1946, and in South East Asia. Although the RAF Regiment had been formed in response to what seemed to be an Army tendency to denude airfield defenses in order to support ground operations, Oliver shows time and again that RAF ground units found themselves in the thick of ground combat, and there was a constant attempt by not only Army commanders but also Air Force commanders to detach and scatter RAF Regiment units and to utilize them in roles for which they were not intended. The RAF Regiment also seemed like a ready reservoir of manpower, and trained officers and enlisted men from the Regiment were often transferred to "real" combat arms.
   Although not a very thick book—especially compared to the author's earlier work on the Regiment and airfield defense—The RAF Regiment at War manages to convey a great deal of information about this element of British forces, an element barely hinted in most other books. Oliver could have improved his work with a few organigrams to illustrate TOEs of the various formations as they evolved during the war, and it would have been helpful had the author compared and contrasted the RAF Regiment's Light Anti-Aircraft squadrons with the LAA formations fielded by the Royal Regiment of Artillery (all the more given how those two branches perpetually seem to have little to say about each other). In sum, though, this is a satisfying and unassuming little book about which only favorable comments can be offered.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Pen and Sword, or from the American distributor, Casemate.
   Thanks to Casemate for providing this review copy.