Warmatrix

The Royal Air Force, the air force of Britain, is the oldest independent air force in the world.
When the Wright brothers built the first true airplane in 1903 CE, the military was quick to grasp its potential. In Britain, the army set up the Royal Flying Corps in 1912 CE and a navy branch too, which became the Royal Naval Air Service two years later. Near the end of World War I high command realized that it needed an independent air force and merged the two into the Royal Air Force (RAF). When the war ended, the combined force employed 300,000 men and more than 20,000 aircraft.
With peace re-established, its budget and numbers were cut to about 10% of the wartime level. The RAF was forced to fight a political battle to avoid being dissolved. It was helped by the rapid development of the airplanes, which broke speed and distance records all the time, attracting the interest of the public. Nonetheless the British navy wrestled control of the naval arm back in 1937 CE. Militarily the RAF was mainly active in policing the British empire, operating in Somaliland, Iraq and Afghanistan. Most military strategists expected the next war to be fought with bombers, armed with explosive bombs and possibly with poison gas, so the air force armed itself with long-distance strategic bombers.
When World War II broke out, nobody used poison gas in fear of retaliation in kind. Instead, the RAF found itself burdened with the task of defending Britain against the German Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Fortunately, it had just been equipped with two types of good fighter planes, the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire. Its ranks were bolstered by airmen from the Commonwealth countries and also those under nazi rule: Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, French, Norwegians and Poles. Though outnumbered, radar and air fights at short range enabled the RAF to hold off the Luftwaffe and with it, the threat of a German invasion. In 1942 CE the focus shifted to Bomber Command, which first bombed German industry and then cities too. This was a costly business to the air force, which lost 55,000 men in three years during these raids. In 1944, at its height, the RAF employed more than 1.1 million men and women, 15% of them aircrew.
After the war, Britain continued its centuries old strategy of repulsing any enemy before it reached British soil. This meant that investments in both navy and air force were kept up, though it was reduced to a peacetime strength of around 150,000 men, maintained into the 1975's CE. During the Cold War the RAF did 1/6 of the work in the Berlin Airlift. When Britain acquired nuclear weapons in 1952 CE, the RAF provided long range bombers until the nuclear role was passed to submarines in 1969 CE. The air force saw some action in the Korean War and some smaller conflicts. It played a supporting role in the Falklands war. Because of a global network of colonies, Commonwealth countries and allies, it has bases all over the world.
Since World War II Britain has had no need to defend its airspace in war; since the end of the cold war any possible threats are far away too. Therefore the RAF resumed an expeditionary role, fighting in the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In the last decades its budget has steadily shrunk and the number of aircraft and men too, to about 300 and 35,000 respectively. Today the RAF uses Eurofighter Typhoons, Tornados and American F-35's, together with a variety of reconnaissance aircraft, helicopters and trainers.