Formation & Interwar · 1918 – 1939

Formation & Interwar

The newly-formed RAF fought for its survival against those who wished to dissolve it. Colonial policing, record-breaking long-distance flights and the dawn of the monoplane era defined two decades of quiet but decisive transformation.

28 Total Records

1 Operations

1 Aircraft

3 People

6 Squadrons

Overview Operations Aircraft People Squadrons Articles

The interwar years were defined by two simultaneous struggles: the RAF's fight for institutional survival, and its search for a role that would justify that survival. Hugh Trenchard, the service's first Chief of the Air Staff, became the apostle of strategic bombing — the doctrine that air power could win wars independently, without the need for armies or navies. It was a controversial theory, but it kept the RAF alive.

Across the empire, the RAF policed vast territories at a fraction of the cost of ground forces. In Iraq, India and the Northwest Frontier, air control became the RAF's primary peacetime function — controversial in its methods, but effective in demonstrating the service's utility to a Treasury determined to cut defence spending.

"Air power is the most difficult of all forms of military force to measure, or even to express in precise terms." — Winston Churchill

Meanwhile, technology transformed. The biplane gave way to the monoplane. The wooden-and-canvas construction of the Great War was replaced by stressed-metal structures. By the late 1930s, the Hurricane and Spitfire were entering service, and Bomber Command was building the force that would eventually strike Germany. The RAF that went to war in 1939 was barely recognisable from the one that had been formed in 1918.

Operations · 1 operation

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Formation & Interwar

Operation Pink’s War

Pink’s War was the RAF’s 1925 campaign in South Waziristan, testing inter-war air control through sustained coercive operations.

success 9 March–1 May 1925

Article

Pink’s War Begins in South Waziristan Under Richard Pink

On 9 March 1925, the RAF opened Pink’s War in South Waziristan, an early test of inter-war air control on the imperial frontier.

9 March 2026 · 3 min read Read the article →

Aircraft · 1 type

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Avro Anson

A. V. Roe and Company

Article

End of Pink’s War as Mahsud Tribes Seek Peace in Waziristan

The 1925 peace approach by Mahsud tribesmen ended Pink’s War and underscored the RAF’s inter-war reliance on frontier air control.

1 May 2026 · 3 min read Read the article →

People · 3 profiles

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Pink’s War showed how the RAF used air power on the North-West Frontier in 1925, and why imperial air control promised economy but revealed clear limits.

5 May 2026 · 4 min read Read the article →