Second World War

The Royal Air Force entered the Second World War as a modern service, forged from the hard lessons of the First World War and shaped by two decades of technological transformation. By September 1939 it possessed the Spitfire, the Hurricane and the first of its four-engined heavy bombers — tools adequate for the fight ahead, though not yet fully equal to the demands that fight would place on them.

The Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was the service's first existential test. Fighter Command, outnumbered and often outclassed by the Luftwaffe's experienced pilots, held long enough for the threat of invasion to pass. The cost was severe: over 550 pilots killed between July and October alone.