Pink’s War: The RAF’s First Independent Air Campaign
Sunrise breaks over the mountains of Waziristan on the ninth of March, 1925. Below, tribesmen who ignored a British ultimatum watch RAF biplanes climb toward their villages. For the next fifty-four days, not a single soldier will cross into their territory. The only force sent against them will be aircraft.
This episode matters because Pink’s War was the first time the Royal Air Force fought an entire campaign completely on its own, no army, no navy, just squadrons testing whether air power alone could bring a hostile population to the negotiating table.
In this episode:
- How Air Marshal Hugh Trenchard’s “air control” doctrine grew out of a fight to keep the fledgling RAF alive after the First World War
- Wing Commander Richard Pink and the three squadrons of Number 2 (Indian) Wing who flew the campaign
- The ultimatum, leaflets, and jirga deadlines that opened fifty-four days of bombing
- The tactics behind the campaign, and the two RAF airmen who lost their lives flying it
- What the peace of May 1925 actually settled, and the harder questions it left unanswered
Listen if you’re interested in:
- RAF history between the wars
- Imperial air policing and colonial frontier warfare
- The origins of British air power doctrine
- Lesser-known RAF operations beyond the World Wars
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