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Wednesday 13 July 2011

Air Force

The air force is a nation'a fighting aircraft, and the organization to maintain them.

The U.S. air force was conceived on Aug. 1, 1907, when the Aeronautical Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps was organized with three persons to study possible military uses of airplanes.

In 1918 Congress authorized the Air Service, still under the U.S. Army. In 1926 the Air Service was renamed the Air Corps.

The United Kingdom's Royal Flying Corps (later the RAF) adopted the red, white and blue roundel (see below) as their aircraft badge on December 11, 1914.


John Balmer achieved renown as a flying instructor in the RAAF by reputedly parachuting from an aircraft to force his pupil to land single-handed.

The oldest independent air force in the world, was founded on April 1, 1918 when The Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Services amalgamated and established a separate service as the Royal Air Force (RAF).


By the end of World War I, the RAF had 291,000 officers and men and 22,171 aircraft.

The Australian Air Board chose March 31, 1921 rather than April 1st as the founding date of the Royal Australian Air Force to avoid being called "April Fools".


The RAF formed 313 Squadron in 1941 as the third Czech fighter squadron during World War II. Its motto was ‘Jeden jestrab mnoho vran rozhani’, which translates as ‘ One hawk scatters many crows’

The United States Air Force accepted its first female recruits into a program called Women in the Air Force (WAF) on July 8, 1948.

The longest running operation in the US Air Force is Operation Christmas Drop, which is a training mission where toys and treats are airdropped into Micronesia. It started in 1952 and has since become the longest running United States Department of Defense mission in full operation, and the longest running humanitarian airlift in the world.

So many aircraft were assembled for the filming of the 1969 movie Battle of Britain that it was the 35th largest air force in the world.

American filmmaker George Lucas was rejected from joining the US Air Force because he had too many speeding tickets.

Florence Green died in 2012 at 110 and was the last known surviving veteran of the First World War. She joined the Royal Air Force; the Women's Royal Air Force in September 1918 at the age of 17, where she served as an officers' mess steward.

Fufu, pet poodle of King Rama IX of Thailand, was given the rank of Air Chief Marshal in the Royal Thai Air Force and attended galas dressed in formal evening attire complete with paw mitts. The death of Fufu in 2015 was followed by four days of Buddhist funeral rites.

The logo of the Royal New Zealand Air Force is the Kiwi, a flightless bird. (See below).


An action scene from the original Top Gun movie was used by the Chinese state TV station, purporting to show its own air force in action.

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