Phoenix Digital Bookshop Modelling the RAF in World War II Retour à l'édition précédente

The Royal Air Force (RAF) was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by merging the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Following the Allied victory over the Central Powers in 1918, the RAF emerged as the largest air force in the world at the time. The RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War, and during the Battle of Britain in 1940, the RAF defended the skies over the UK against the numerically superior German Luftwaffe. In what is perhaps the most prolonged and complicated air campaign in history, the Battle of Britain contributed significantly to the delay and subsequent indefinite postponement of Operation ‘Sea Lion’, Hitler’s plans for an invasion of the UK. In the House of Commons on 20 August, prompted by the ongoing efforts of the RAF, Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a speech to the nation, where he said, ‘Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few’. The largest RAF effort during the war was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany by Bomber Command. The RAF adopted night-time area bombing on German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden. Night-time area bombing constituted the great bulk of the RAF’s bombing campaign, mainly due to Harris, but it also developed precision bombing techniques for specific operations, such as the ‘Dambusters’ raid by No.617 Squadron, or the Amiens prison raid known as Operation ‘Jericho’. Modelling RAF aircraft from the Second World War has been and continues to be one of the most popular subjects of the genre, and in this new Aviation in Scale series we take a look at some of the aircraft of that era, and how to build them in scale.