Raf Quotes

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

High time they put the RAF in kilts.

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

You don’t like people?” Raf asked. “I don’t like what people do to each other.

I mean, I'm not antisocial or anything, but I sometimes don't see the point of hanging out with a whole bunch of people at a party if all you really want to do is hang out with just one person.

First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.

You don't stop loving someone just because they do something that surprises or even disappoints you. Maybe facts and formulas comfort Marcus, but I think that article he read was totally wrong. You don't love chemical reactions or particles or neuron receptors. You love whole people. Including the parts you didn't know were there, and the parts you're waiting for them to become.

So we get a karaoke machine. On the first night, the year tens stage a competition, insisting that every member of the House has to be involved, so we clear the year-seven and -eight dorms and wait for our turn. Raffy is on second and does an impressive job of "I Can''t Live, If Living Means Without You" but then one of the seniors points out to her that she's chosen a dependency song and Raffy spends the whole night neuroticising about it. "I just worked out that I don't have ambition," she says while one of the year eights sings tearfully, "Am I Not Pretty Enough?" I start compiling a list of all the kids I should be recommending to the school counsellor, based on their song choices. "I think she's reading a little to much into it, Raf." "No she isn't. Because do you know what my second and third choices were? 'Don't Leave Me This Way' and 'I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself.'" "Mary Grace chose 'Brown-eyed Girl' and she's got blue eyes and Serina sang 'It's Raining Men' and she's a lesbian. You're taking this way too seriously. Let it go.

I don't really know; I'm not in the Operations Room, you see. All I do know is that the world has a Chief who was victorious when the powers of darkness struck at Him with everything they had. He has the plans today. The darkness won't last forever. There's a splendor beyond. ~Flying Officer George Dymory Ingleford, Enemy Brothers

We’re not feeling edgy; the system is feeling nervous.

They see in the political apathy of the proletariat only the apathy, not the protest against a system that has nothing to offer them.

I once met an RAF pilot who told me of what he called a "bird strike". This, rather unfairly in my view, made it sound as if it was the bird's fault; as if the little feathered chap had deliberately tried to head-butt twenty tons of metal travelling in the opposite direction at just under the speed of sound, out of spite.

I’m very attracted to things that I can’t define.

Strength lies not in defence but in attack.

The rejection of sabotage in the metropole, based on the argument that it would be better to take things over instead of destroying them, is based on the dictum: The people of the Third World should wait for their revolution until the masses in the metropole catch up.

They see in the population’s hostility towards the left only the hostility towards the left, not the hatred against those who are socially privileged.

Following this logic, to bomb BASF in Ludwigshafen would be to mock the people who bombed BASF in Brazil. The Latin American comrades feel differently. BASF does as well.

In its offensive against the state, the urban guerilla cannot resort to terrorism as a weapon.

Dresden, which I am told presents no military or industrial targets whatsoever for the RAF.

which is why she tried to join the RAF, so she could obtain a socially respectable opportunity to gratify her homicidal urges.” “So

RAF pilots used to eat bilberries when they were flying night missions during the war.’ I was quite proud of that. It was something I had learned researching Foyle’s War.

Churchill’s post-war bodyguard, Ron Golding, who was an RAF squadron leader in 1940, recalled, ‘After those speeches, we wanted the Germans to come.

As much as he loved to fly, in the prewar years he regarded his RAF aircraft more as a tool for cracking open English high society than as a weapon for defeating Britain’s enemies.

Someone else knows,” I said. “The three most dangerous words in the secrecy business. But there it is. I know, and Ms. Nice knows. Which is why we came back with the RAF. Because where would your plane have landed? Guantanamo, maybe. But it didn’t, and we’re back in America, free and clear. And we know. I’m sure you could crush Ms. Nice’s career, but you’ll never find me. I’ll always be out there. And you know me, General. You’ve known me a long time. I don’t forgive, and I don’t forget. And I won’t have to do much. Talking might be enough. Suppose the SVR found out it was you who got Khenkin killed? Some of those IOUs might get canceled. And they might retaliate. Rumors might start, about poor old Tom O’Day, who got so desperate he came up with a cockamamie scheme.

Tactics programmed for the SIOP are in two principal categories,” the head of the Joint Chiefs later explained, “the penetration phase and the delivery phase.” SAC would attack the Soviet Union “front-to-rear,” hitting air defenses along the border first, then penetrating more deeply into the nation’s interior and destroying targets along the way, a tactic called “bomb as you go.” Great Britain’s strategic weapons were controlled by the SIOP, as well. The Royal Air Force showed little interest in SAC’s ideas about counterforce. The British philosophy of strategic bombing had changed little since the Second World War, and the RAF’s Bomber Command wanted to use its nuclear weapons solely for city busting. The SIOP respected the British preference, asking Bomber Command to destroy three air bases, six air defense targets, and forty-eight cities.

We piled aboard the small chopper and after a bit of map pointing to the pilot we lifted off. "I love the RAF," said Jed. "I love them too, sir," said I. After a short flight the chopper landed. We all got out and waved our thanks and farewells to the crew and Major Jenner checked his map. After a quick examination he announced that we had been dropped in the wrong place. "I fucking hate the RAF," said Jed. "I fucking hate them too, sir," said I.

And at the end of the evening he and Dym had made plans, airy ambitious plans, of all that they would do after the war. Euphemia had laughed at the planners. “What boundless energy you have, Jacob!” she had said. Jacob had turned - Tony could see the dark, curly head and sparkling eyes quite plainly - and smiled at her. “Madam,” he had said, “if I had a thousand lives, I could fill them all.

The fact is that the system in the metropole reproduces itself through an ongoing offensive against the people’s psyche, not in an openly fascist way, but rather through the market. Therefore, to write off entire sections of the population as an impediment to anti-imperialist struggle, simply because they don’t fit into Marx’ analysis of capitalism, is as insane and sectarian as it is un-Marxist.

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’ Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Kennedy, in turn, was not well liked in London. The wife of Churchill’s foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, detested the ambassador for his pessimism about Britain’s chances for survival and his prediction that the RAF would quickly be crushed. She wrote, “I could have killed him with pleasure.

You were five or six, Raf. When you washed up on the rocks below you were in shock, you had hypothermia, you’d seen slaughter at close quarters, you’d drifted for heaven only knows how long in the cold Atlantic, you were alone. You’re not a forgetter, you’re a survivor. I think it’s a miracle you remember anything at all.” Rafiq takes a clipping of his own hair, fallen onto his thigh, and rubs it moodily between his finger and thumb. I think back to that spring night. It was calm and warm for April, which probably saved Rafiq’s life. Aoife and Örvar had only died the autumn before, and Lorelei was a mess. So was I, but I had to pretend not to be, for Lorelei’s sake.

They flew in the first plane to be specifically assigned to Churchill, an American-built, four-engined, Consolidated LB-30A based on the B-24 Liberator bomber and named Commando. William J. Vanderkloot, an American who had volunteered for the RAF before Pearl Harbor, was Churchill’s personal pilot. The plane was bitterly cold and deafeningly

Two large trials of antioxidants were set up after Peto’s paper (which rather gives the lie to nutritionists’ claims that vitamins are never studied because they cannot be patented: in fact there have been a great many such trials, although the food supplement industry, estimated by one report to be worth over $50 billion globally, rarely deigns to fund them). One was in Finland, where 30,000 participants at high risk of lung cancer were recruited, and randomised to receive either ß-carotene, vitamin E, or both, or neither. Not only were there more lung cancers among the people receiving the supposedly protective ß-carotene supplements, compared with placebo, but this vitamin group also had more deaths overall, from both lung cancer and heart disease. The results of the other trial were almost worse. It was called the ‘Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial’, or ‘CARET’, in honour of the high p-carotene content of carrots. It’s interesting to note, while we’re here, that carrots were the source of one of the great disinformation coups of World War II, when the Germans couldn’t understand how our pilots could see their planes coming from huge distances, even in the dark. To stop them trying to work out if we’d invented anything clever like radar (which we had), the British instead started an elaborate and entirely made-up nutritionist rumour. Carotenes in carrots, they explained, are transported to the eye and converted to retinal, which is the molecule that detects light in the eye (this is basically true, and is a plausible mechanism, like those we’ve already dealt with): so, went the story, doubtless with much chortling behind their excellent RAF moustaches, we have been feeding our chaps huge plates of carrots, to jolly good effect. Anyway. Two groups of people at high risk of lung cancer were studied: smokers, and people who had been exposed to asbestos at work. Half were given 3-carotene and vitamin A, while the other half got placebo. Eighteen thousand participants were due to be recruited throughout its course, and the intention was that they would be followed up for an average of six years; but in fact the trial was terminated early, because it was considered unethical to continue it. Why? The people having the antioxidant tablets were 46 per cent more likely to die from lung cancer, and 17 per cent more likely to die of any cause,* than the people taking placebo pills. This is not news, hot off the presses: it happened well over a decade ago.

No amount of money can buy you a career in the RAF. You are judged purely on your ability, your courage, and your appetite for facing danger. I loved my family and respected and admired the traditions and benefits of our privilege, but I was determined to make my own way in life. It was probably this that drove my ambition, that made me push myself harder than most people.

Flares and small incendiary bombs began to fall as the car approached Kreuzberg. The neighborhood was a typical target for the RAF’s current strategy of killing as many civilian factory workers as possible. With staggering hypocrisy Churchill and Attlee were claiming they attacked only military targets, and civilian casualties were a regrettable side effect. Berliners knew better.

As we have seen, Pharaoh's magicians were able to deceive everyone, apart from Musa (as) and those who believed in him. However, his evidence broke the spell, or "swallowed up what they had forged," as the verse puts it: We revealed to Musa: "Throw down your staff." And it immediately swallowed up what they had forged. So the Truth took place and what they did was shown to be false. (Surat al-A‘raf, 117-8)

Until August the Luftwaffe had raided only ports and airfields. Fitz had explained, in an unusually candid moment, that the British were not so scrupulous: the government had approved bombing of targets in German cities back in May, and all through June and July the RAF had dropped bombs on women and children in their homes. The German public had been enraged by this and demanded retaliation. The Blitz was the result.

It's hard to get animals to reproduce in a zoo, but people, even condemned to death, even hunted by Leclerc's army, with the woods full of Fifis and the whole R.A.F on top of them thundering day and night, don't lose their desire to squirt! not in the least...

In fact, the Qur'an relates the incident of Prophet Musa (as) and Pharaoh to show that some people who support atheistic philosophies actually influence others by magic. When Pharaoh was told about the true religion, he told Prophet Musa (as) to meet with his own magicians. When Musa (as) did so, he told them to demonstrate their abilities first. The verses continue: He said: "You throw." And when they threw, they cast a spell on the people's eyes and caused them to feel great fear of them. They produced an extremely powerful magic. (Surat al-A‘raf, 116)

Most galling was that his own Air Ministry appeared to be unable to account for 3,500 airplanes out of 8,500 frontline and reserve aircraft believed ready, or nearly ready, for service. “Surely there is in the Air Ministry an account kept of what happens to every machine,” Churchill complained in a subsequent minute. “These are very expensive articles. We must know the date when each one was received by the RAF and when it was finally struck off, and for what reason.” After all, he noted, even automaker Rolls-Royce kept track of each of car it sold. “A discrepancy of 3,500 in 8,500 is glaring.

After the Christmas and New Year of 1944 my mother and I returned to Strausberg, but the area was full of people evacuated from Berlin due to mass bombings on the capital by the RAF. These had started, in a small way, on 25 August, 1940, and had continued through 1941 and 1942. However, by November, 1943, these air attacks were major, involving mass bomber streams of more than 800 aircraft. I used to stand outside the front of our house and look at the sky, watching the silver bombers turning over Strausberg and heading in the direction of Berlin. Many were shot down, some near us in the fields around Strausberg.

In the sketch, I was sitting on the garden wall, my face in profile as I stared into the distance. My eyes were unfocused. A cigarette burned, forgotten, between my fingers. Raf drew me as I was, with round curves, folds in my stomach, and chubby thighs—but through his eyes I was beautiful. Because those features were just small parts of the picture. My face, which undoubtedly was blotchy from crying that night, was clear and angled. Even my messy bun was more of a purposeful updo, with soft tendrils that framed my face. The shirt that I'd been wearing that I'd worried was too tight instead hugged my curves purposefully and exposed a little cleavage. Or at least, that's how Raf had drawn it.

A big blow came in June 1962, when Churchill slipped and fell in his suite at the Hôtel de Paris. While drifting in and out of consciousness, Churchill told Montague Brown that he wanted to die in England. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan dispatched an RAF Comet to bring the Great Man home. The press expected the worst. Montague Browne believed he would have to instruct the Duke of Norfolk to set Operation Hope Not—Churchill’s state funeral—in motion. On the flight to London, Churchill, heavily sedated, awoke, and muttered to Montague Browne: “I don’t think I’ll go back to that place, it’s unlucky. First Toby, and then this.” Montague Browne had forgotten Toby, the budgerigar, but Churchill had not. The body was frail, but not the wit.

*“Oh, well, that’s all interpreted well enough as far as it goes, Jim,” I says; “but what does these things stand for?” It was the leaves and rubbish on the raft and the smashed oar. You could see them first-rate now. Jim looked at the trash, and then looked at me, and back at the trash again. He had got the dream fixed so strong in his head that he couldn’t seem to shake it loose and get the facts back into its place again right away. But when he did get the thing straightened around he looked at me steady without ever smiling, and says: “What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ’em ashamed.” Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

It was perhaps, then, not surprising that it was Colonel Beppo Schmid, not General Martini, who on 16 July submitted to Göring the principal intelligence appreciation of the RAF, which became the basis for the Luftwaffe General Staff’s plans. He underestimated the strength of squadrons, claiming they were eighteen aircraft strong, when in fact they had between twenty-two and twenty-four aircraft. He also stated that only a limited number of airfields could be considered operational with modern maintenance and supply installations, which was nonsense. He badly underestimated current aircraft production figures to the tune of about 50 per cent and claimed there was ‘little strategic flexibility’, when, in fact, Dowding’s air defence system provided exactly the opposite. The Me110, he claimed, was a superior fighter to the Hurricane. Even more glaring were the omissions. The Luftwaffe had no concept of how the air defence system worked, no concept of there being three different commands – Fighter, Coastal and Bomber – and no understanding of how repairs were organized. ‘The Luftwaffe is clearly superior to the RAF,’ he concluded, ‘as regards strength, equipment, training, command and location of bases.’7 He was correct in terms of strength only. The rest of his claims were utter twaddle. On the eve of Adlertag, Schmid further reassured the Luftwaffe General Staff that some 350 British fighters had been destroyed since the beginning of July and that they were already being shot down faster than they could be produced. In fact, up to 12 August, 181 had been destroyed and more than 700 new fighter aircraft built.8 The gulf between fact and fiction was quite startling.

The couple went into the vestry and came out again, Lilibet radiant with happiness. She passed back down the aisle and then, reaching the place where her parents stood, paused and swept them a deep, beautiful curtsey. As the memory of that very first curtsey to the king on his accession day came back with force, Marian fumbled for her handkerchief. Outside it was all wild pealing of the bells and the cheers of the crowds clustering about the Abbey. Margaret emerged with Peter Townsend beside her, dashing in his RAF uniform. She was looking up at him in a manner that could be interpreted only in one way. The queen was coming out now. She paused beside Marion and smiled. "I think she is happy, Crawfie." The glassy blue eyes were wistful. "I know how you feel, ma'am," Marion said, from her full heart. "I feel as if I've lost a daughter as well." The queen drew back. There was a beat or two before she said, with her usual serene smile, "I'm sure you do, Crawfie. But they grow up and leave us, and we must make the best of it." With that, she passed on to her carriage. Lilibet and Philip's had already set off, glittering in the sunlight, borne by cheers, into their glorious future.

Roderick Sutton, Earl of Westerham, owner of Farleigh Place, a stately home in Kent Lady Esme Sutton, Roderick’s wife Lady Olivia “Livvy” Sutton, twenty-six, the Suttons’ eldest daughter, married to Viscount Carrington, mother of Charles Lady Margaret “Margot” Sutton, twenty-three, the second daughter, now living in Paris Lady Pamela “Pamma” Sutton, twenty-one, the third daughter, currently working for a “government department” Lady Diana “Dido” Sutton, nineteen, the fourth daughter, a frustrated debutante Lady Phoebe “Feebs” Sutton, twelve, the fifth daughter, too smart and observant for her own good Servants at Farleigh (a skeleton staff) Soames, butler Mrs. Mortlock, cook Elsie, parlourmaid Jennie, housemaid Ruby, scullery maid Philpott, Lady Esme’s maid Nanny Miss Gumble, governess to Lady Phoebe Mr. Robbins, gamekeeper Mrs. Robbins, gamekeeper’s wife Alfie, a Cockney boy, now evacuated to the country Jackson, groom Farleigh Neighbours Rev. Cresswell, vicar of All Saints Church Ben Cresswell, the vicar’s son, now working for a “government department” At Nethercote Sir William Prescott, city financier Lady Prescott, Sir William’s wife Jeremy Prescott, Sir William and Lady Prescott’s son, RAF flying ace At Simla Colonel Huntley, formerly of the British Army Mrs. Huntley, the colonel’s wife Miss Hamilton, spinster Dr. Sinclair, doctor Sundry villagers, including an artist couple, a builder, and a questionable Austrian Officers of the Royal West Kent Regiment Colonel Pritchard, commanding officer Captain Hartley, adjutant Soldiers under command At Dolphin Square Maxwell Knight, spymaster Joan Miller, Knight’s secretary At Bletchley Park Commander Travis, deputy

As explained above, those who believe in the theory of evolution think that a few atoms and molecules thrown into a huge vat could produce thinking, reasoning professors and university students; such scientists as Einstein and Galileo; such artists as Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and Luciano Pavarotti; as well as antelopes, lemon trees, and carnations. Moreover, as the scientists and professors who believe in this nonsense are educated people, it is quite justifiable to speak of this theory as "the most potent spell in history." Never before has any other belief or idea so taken away peoples' powers of reason, refused to allow them to think intelligently and logically, and hidden the truth from them as if they had been blindfolded. This is an even worse and unbelievable blindness than the totem worship in some parts of Africa, the people of Saba worshipping the Sun, the tribe of Prophet Ibrahim (as) worshipping idols they had made with their own hands, or the people of Prophet Musa (as) worshipping the Golden Calf. In fact, Allah has pointed to this lack of reason in the Qur'an. In many verses, He reveals that some peoples' minds will be closed and that they will be powerless to see the truth. Some of these verses are as follows: As for those who do not believe, it makes no difference to them whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe. Allah has sealed up their hearts and hearing and over their eyes is a blindfold. They will have a terrible punishment. (Surat al-Baqara, 6-7) … They have hearts with which they do not understand. They have eyes with which they do not see. They have ears with which they do not hear. Such people are like cattle. No, they are even further astray! They are the unaware. (Surat al-A‘raf, 179) Even if We opened up to them a door into heaven, and they spent the day ascending through it, they would only say: "Our eyesight is befuddled! Or rather we have been put under a spell!" (Surat al-Hijr, 14-15)

This new surge in morale had nothing to do with Churchill’s speech and everything to do with his gift for understanding how simple gestures could generate huge effects. What had infuriated Londoners was that during these night raids the Luftwaffe seemed free to come and go as it wished, without interference from the night-blind RAF and the city’s strangely quiescent anti-aircraft guns. Gun crews were under orders to conserve ammunition and fire only when aircraft were sighted overhead and, as a consequence, did little firing at all. On Churchill’s orders, more guns were brought to the city, boosting the total to nearly two hundred, from ninety-two. More importantly, Churchill now directed their crews to fire with abandon, despite his knowing full well that guns only rarely brought down aircraft. The orders took effect that Wednesday night, September 11. The impact on civic morale was striking and immediate. Crews blasted away; one official described it as “largely wild and uncontrolled shooting.” Searchlights swept the sky. Shells burst over Trafalgar Square and Westminster like fireworks, sending a steady rain of shrapnel onto the streets below, much to the delight of London’s residents. The guns raised “a momentous sound that sent a chattering, smashing, blinding thrill through the London heart,” wrote novelist William Sansom. Churchill himself loved the sound of the guns; instead of seeking shelter, he would race to the nearest gun emplacement and watch. The new cacophony had “an immense effect on people’s morale,” wrote private secretary John Martin. “Tails are up and, after the fifth sleepless night, everyone looks quite different this morning—cheerful and confident. It was a curious bit of mass psychology—the relief of hitting back.” The next day’s Home Intelligence reports confirmed the effect. “The dominating topic of conversation today is the anti-aircraft barrage of last night. This greatly stimulated morale: in public shelters people cheered and conversation shows that the noise brought a shock of positive pleasure.

After your email about the Late Bronze Age collapse, I became very intrigued by the idea that writing systems could be ‘lost’. In fact I wasn’t really sure what that even meant, so I had to look it up, and I ended up reading a lot about something called Linear B. Do you know all about this already? Basically, around the year 1900, a team of British excavators in Crete found a cache of ancient clay tablets in a terracotta bathtub. The tablets were inscribed with a syllabic script of unknown language and appeared to date from around 1400 BCE. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, classical scholars and linguists tried to decipher the markings, known as Linear B, with no success. Although the script was organised like writing, no one could work out what language it transcribed. Most academics hypothesised it was a lost language of the Minoan culture on Crete, with no remaining descendants in the modern world. In 1936, at the age of eighty-five, the archaeologist Arthur Evans gave a lecture in London about the tablets, and in attendance at the lecture was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy named Michael Ventris. Before the Second World War broke out, a new cache of tablets was found and photographed – this time on the Greek mainland. Still, no attempts to translate the script or identify its language were successful. Michael Ventris had grown up in the meantime and trained as an architect, and during the war he was conscripted to serve in the RAF. He hadn’t received any formal qualifications in linguistics or classical languages, but he’d never forgotten Arthur Evans’s lecture that day about Linear B. After the war, Ventris returned to England and started to compare the photographs of the newly discovered tablets from the Greek mainland with the inscriptions on the old Cretan tablets. He noticed that certain symbols on the tablets from Crete were not replicated on any of the samples from Pylos. He guessed that those particular symbols might represent place names on the island. Working from there, he figured out how to decipher the script – revealing that Linear B was in fact an early written form of ancient Greek. Ventris’s work not only demonstrated that Greek was the language of the Mycenaean culture, but also provided evidence of written Greek which predated the earliest-known examples by hundreds of years. After the discovery, Ventris and the classical scholar and linguist John Chadwick wrote a book together on the translation of the script, entitled ‘Documents in Mycenaean Greek’. Weeks before the publication of the book in 1956, Ventris crashed his car into a parked truck and died. He was thirty-four

As they say in the RAF: “Any prang you walk away from is a good prang”.

Towards the end of the evening, British soldiers had dragged a man to see Tennant, explaining that he was a spy who had tried to smuggle himself into Dunkirk, and should be shot. Tennant was soon clear that the man was exactly who he claimed to be, an RAF officer who had been shot down over German-held territory, had found a bike and had cycled to Dunkirk. On way, he said, he had heard a noise and hidden behind a hedge while the tanks went by. It was then that he realised the panzers were going the wrong way – for some reason, they were driving away from Dunkirk. It was the first indication for Tennant that there might still be a lull in the German advance long enough to collect the bulk of the BEF after all. The problem was that the BEF had not yet reached Dunkirk in force, and it was the other flank protecting their retreat, the one looking east, that was now under threat. The Belgian army was now down to its last auxiliary troops, using First World War artillery from the training college. They told Gort at 10pm that they had agreed to an armistice with Germany, starting in just one hour. It left a 25 kilometre gap that would need to be filled to protect them against the other side of the advancing enemy army.

When the well-disciplined soldier emerged from the mud of the trenches, he let himself be led to an anonymous death, meted out on an industrial scale. If an element of heroism could be recognized in this, it was simply on account of his capacity to slavishly endure the dehumanized horror, when the mutilated bodies of the veterans and the minds destroyed by trauma haunted a Europe fascinated by the spectacle of its own decline. The Arab warrior, on the other hand, was as capable of hatred as he was capable of love; his explosions of anger could follow his most magnanimous gestures. For him, war was still romantic, an ‘excitement’ whose tragic outcomes he accepted as a fatality inherent to life. In short, the Arabs were different from us, so different that ‘they have no objection to being killed’, as Hugh Trenchard, head of the RAF general staff, explained to the sensitive souls of the British Parliament.49 Arabs loved war precisely because it involved a confrontation with death, and as opposed to the effeminate Europeans, they did not make the flabby distinction between combatants and non-combatants. If you thought about it properly, not bombing them would almost amount to insulting their values.

Again and again, the question was asked: What made the Poles so good? The answer wasn’t simple. Generally older than their British counterparts, most Polish pilots had hundreds of hours of flying time in a variety of aircraft, as well as combat experience in both Poland and France. Unlike British fliers, they had learned to fly in primitive, outdated planes and thus had not been trained to rely on a sophisticated radio and radar network. As a result, said one British flight instructor, “their understanding and handling of aircraft was exceptional.” Although they appreciated the value of tools such as radio and radar, the Poles never stopped using their eyes to locate the Luftwaffe. “Whereas British pilots are trained…to go exactly where they are told, Polish pilots are always turning and twisting their heads to spot a distant enemy,” an RAF flier noted. The Poles’ intensity of concentration was equaled only by their daring. British pilots were taught to fly and fight with caution. The Poles, by contrast, had been trained to be aggressive, to crowd and intimidate the enemy, to make him flinch and then bring him down. After firing a brief opening burst at a range of 150 to 200 yards, the Poles would close almost to point-blank range. “When they go tearing into enemy bombers and fighters they get so close you would think they were going to collide,” observed one RAF flier. On several occasions, crew members of Luftwaffe bombers, seeing that 303’s Hurricanes were about to attack, baled out before their planes were hit. On September 15, the Poles of

I honestly wanted to barf. Multiple times. "I wanted to savor every tidbit with Rafael. It was like a good book, one I'd been waiting for and anticipating, and once I'd gotten it in my hands, I couldn't bear to read one single page because that would be one fewer page I would get to read. My dad knocked on my door and poked his head in. "Breakfast, Pipe," he said, and then, looking at my face, he frowned. "What's wrong?" "I don't want to turn his pages!" "Whose pages?" "Never mind. Sorry. I'm fine." Because Raf was a person. Not a book. He didn't have a beginning and an end. It wasn't like I had a set amount of minutes with him, and every minute spent together was a minute gone that I wouldn't get back.

It was always felt that the Germans in particular were very fastidious in confirming claims of Allied aircraft shot down, but this appears to have not been the case.

I don’t know how long I sat there staring at the flimsy sheet of airmail paper. Having grown up as an only child, I was shocked to discover in one day that I might have two brothers in other parts of the world. If this one had survived, I thought. Perhaps he had been hidden with a kind family in the hills, to be reunited with his mother when hostilities ceased. That is what I tried to believe. But now I was dying to know more. My father never spoke of his wartime experiences, but I knew from my mother that he had been a pilot with the RAF and terribly brave, flying missions over occupied Europe until he was shot down and nearly died. I hadn’t even known this happened over Italy. One didn’t tend to think of Italy as a scene of bombing missions.

into his jeans and button-down shirt. He dropped off the RAF overalls in the trunk of the car, and then looked around him. The car park was empty. He walked to the side of the parking lot. The fence was low there and he vaulted across it to the low ground that led to the pebble beach. He cut straight across, heading to the port, walking quickly across the shrub and grassland. A line of low trees near the port fence gave him cover. He studied the wire fence. It was about ten feet tall, with regularly spaced posts, and he couldn’t see any signs of electricity. There wasn’t any barbed wire at the top, which made his life a lot easier. He grabbed the wire mesh and shook it. It was firm and would take his weight. He wrapped his legs around a post and pulled himself up with both hands, using it like a fast rope. He crouched over the top and jumped down. The brick wall of a building lay in front of him. He could hear an engine wheezing and what sounded like train railway

a confirmed fascist and of Anti-Bolshevik and Anti-Jewish ideas.’ In 1945, Freeman joined the Waffen SS. He was prominent on a MI9 ‘British Renegades Warning List’ and was captured at the end of the war. Back in the UK he was court-martialled by the RAF in September 1945

A Brazilian, talking to one of the R.A.F. men, said that he could not understand two major nations fighting over the tiny Falklands; it was, said the Brazilian, ‘like two bald men fighting over a comb’.

In his four months in England, wrote Corwin, “I did not once interview a high government official. The main objective of the series was to establish the character of the British people and not disseminate the handouts of the Ministry of Information. The people were soldiers, sailors, workers, miners, the theater manager, the elevator man, Police Officer Gilbert, the Everingtons, the Westerbys, Betty Hardy the actress, Henry Blogg the lifesaver, Mary Seaton the newspaperwoman, the RAF officer who handed me a dish in the mess and explained, ‘This sausage is made of two ingredients—paper and sawdust’; the navigator, just returned from Wilhelmshaven, who said wistfully, ‘Somehow we’re always first in over the target’; the woman in Swansea who went to the Guildhall one morning following a severe blitz and turned in two suits of clothes, both nearly new, saying she had bought them for her two boys, killed in the raid.

Isle of Guernsey, meanwhile, was responsible for picking Flying Officer Ken Newton out of the sea. Newton was an RAF pilot who had bailed out after a dogfight. Like the character Collins in the film, he was helped out of the water by sailors. The sailors were killed, however, by German aircraft raking them with machine-gun fire as they

A teacher by profession, [a much-decorated Bomber Command pilot] thought nothing of the war for years afterwards. Then a younger generation of his colleagues began to ask with repetitive, inquisitive distaste: ‘How could you have done it? How could you have flown over Germany night after night to bomb women and children?’ He began to brood more and more deeply about his past. He changed his job and started to teach mentally-handicapped children, which he saw as a kind of restitution. Yet still, more than thirty years after, his memories of the war haunt him. It is wrong that it should be so. He was a brave man who achieved an outstanding record in the RAF. The aircrew of Bomber Command went out to do what they were told had to be done for the survival of Britain and for Allied victory.

Making history was never the aim of the Norwegian saboteurs, nor of the British sappers who were sent before them. After the war, the sacrifice of the British Royal Engineers and RAF crews of the ill-fated Operation Freshman was not forgotten. Thirty-seven bodies were recovered and buried at gravesites in Norway. Bill Bray’s headstone reads, "To live in the hearts of those that loved me is not to die.

It was only years after the war that the Irgun position was somewhat vindicated. In fact, for all the noble talk, the British had been doing almost nothing on behalf of Europe’s doomed Jews. Even as the various factions were arguing the point in Palestine, Jewish leaders, increasingly aware of the horrifying facts, were strenuously urging that the RAF begin bombing the rail lines leading to Auschwitz. It was an eminently achievable task, since English planes were already bombing Warsaw, two hundred miles farther from their base. The English leadership refused without explanation. It does not take much of a cynic to guess that they saw an advantage in cutting down the possible number of postwar Jewish refugees to Palestine.

La nostra bomba è il fiore, ossia la espressione naturale della nostra società contemporanea, così come i dialoghi di Platone lo sono della città greca; il Colosseo, dei Romani imperiali; le Madonne di Raf­faello, dell’Umanesimo italiano; le gondole, della nobiltà veneziana; la tarantella, di certe popolazioni rustiche meridionali; e i campi di sterminio, della cultura piccolo-borghese burocratica già infetta da una rabbia di suicidio atomico.

Reading contemporary sources, there can be no doubt that the Battle of the Ruhr marked a turning point in the history of the German war economy, which has been grossly underestimated by post-war accounts.29 As Speer himself acknowledged, the RAF was hitting the right target.30 The Ruhr was not only Europe’s most important producer of coking coal and steel, it was also a crucial source of intermediate components of all kinds.

Malenie was hiding. The sun burned hot and brilliant on the white plaster and dull adobe houses, banishing the shadows from even so narrow an alley. Sweat prickled along her hairline. She leaned against the wall, its grit rubbing off on her back, and tried to stop panting. Fear and humiliation made a hard fist of her stomach, urging her to run again. Only two streets over, the market hummed with activity, promising safety.

I feel the shadow of wings across my face, Icarus wings, faltering in my flight.

Nightingale was against it from the start, said we should send in the RAF and bomb the camp from altitude. He said it was the only way to be sure.” He gave me a puzzled look. “Did I say something funny?

The development of the RAF strategy of attacking enemy morale through deliberate destruction of the urban area had its roots in the 1930s, when the discussion of future bombing strategy assumed that in modern war there was no distinction any longer between combatant and non-combatant. Civilians were regarded as a target because they contributed materially to sustaining the enemy war effort, a mirror image of the popular civilian conviction that their own staying power was likely to be an objective in any future war.

There was pretty much nothing for the RAF to do. I’d signed up to get it over with, but national service was where I first discovered the joy of idleness, first glimpsed the lack of correlation between effort and reward, an epiphany that subsequent years of night school never quite snuffed out. Tony – Angela’s Tony – would have enjoyed national service, I remember thinking, if he hadn’t manufactured flat feet to keep out of the war. He’d have been good at it.

The resilience of the British military, and in particular the RAF, allowed Great Britain to remain free from Nazi occupation.

He pieced together incidents at intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) sites across the US, including Malmstrom, Minot, F.E. Warren, Ellsworth, Vandenberg and Walker air force bases. He also found evidence UAPs were taking an interest in nuclear weapons storage areas at the air force’s Wurtsmith and Loring bases, as well as the RAF Bentwaters base in England. ‘It’s clear they’re tampering with the weapons. Now is it because they have our best interests at heart?’ Hastings tells me. ‘Is that what’s going on? Or do they have a need for this planet and they don’t want us to screw it up with radioactivity. Do they plan to invade, and they don’t want to inherit a radioactive husk of a world? I

There was class distinction in the RAF, as there was and still is in British society as a whole. It was said, for example, that a regular officer was an officer trying to be a gentleman, an auxiliary was a gentleman trying to be an officer and a VR was neither trying to be both.

Lume Books was founded by Matthew Lynn, one of the true pioneers of independent publishing.

The famous pilot was treated with elaborate courtesy by his German captors: in an act of bizarre gallantry, they informed the British that Bader’s artificial right leg was no longer fit for purpose and invited the RAF to send a replacement. Sure enough, with Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering’s official approval, the unimaginatively named “Operation Leg” was launched on August 19, when an RAF bomber was given safe conduct over Saint-Omer and dropped a new prosthesis by parachute on the nearest Luftwaffe base in occupied France, along with stump socks, powder, tobacco, and chocolate.

...I remembered how Philby's enemy, [T.E.] Lawrence, refused his country's decorations, and later even a commission in the R.A.F., and enlisted as a simple airman. In 1940 this seemed irresponsible and hysterical to me. But by 1945 I had seen a score or more British and Americans on the verge of treason through similar bitterness. . . . By 1945 I grew to understand the Philby-Lawrence reaction and to consider such men, and their honour, as casualties of war -- for war cares no more for honour, or for decency and honesty, than it does for life.

over twenty years old. Seemingly, whoever occupied the bedsit during the war years enjoyed the Daily Express and the Sunday Pictorial. William flattened out each page, noted the dates, then assembled them in order. ‘We never surrender’, announced the Daily Express as it reported on the evacuation of Dunkirk in the early days of June 1940. Then, later that year, ‘RAF triumphs in biggest air battles of war’.

We never surrender’, announced the Daily Express as it reported on the evacuation of Dunkirk in the early days of June 1940. Then, later that year, ‘RAF triumphs in biggest air battles of war’. Even now, twenty-two years on, William felt a sense of pride as he read the articles. So many emotions were stirred in him as he was drawn to the next article and the one after that. On and on, until it was past midnight and he was certain sleep would never come.

When the big German guns at Calais fired on us, we realized, we had been strafed by Spitfires from the RAF during working up exercises for the invasion, accidentally attacked by the USN off Normandy after D-Day and shelled by the British Army in the English Channel. It was about time the enemy took a few shots at us too!" Jack Harold, RCNVR, Signalman HMCS TRENTONIAN Chapter 9, White Ensign Flying -The Story of HMCS TRENTONIAN.

había descolgado de la pared su póster favorito, una fotografía de un biplano Tiger Moth con los emblemas circulares de la RAF en sus alas.

As might be expected, the overall effectiveness of air attacks along the roads turned on the configuration of the ground. The 9th Bombardment Division put 136 tons of high explosive on St. Vith, which stood in the open with a wealth of bypass routes around it on relatively level ground, and stopped the German traffic not at all. Even when the RAF dropped 1,140 tons in a carpet bombing attack at St. Vith, the road center was out of commission for only a day. Yet a mere 150 tons put on La Roche over a period of two days stopped all major movement in this sector of the Ardennes road net. La Roche, be it noted, lay at the bottom of a gorge with access only through deep defiles.

The ballpoint pen was invented by László Bíró, a Hungarian journalist who fled to Argentina to escape the German occupation of Europe. In 1943 he licensed his invention to the RAF, and the first ballpoint pens were manufactured in Reading, England, by the Miles aircraft manufacturer, to supply pilots with a lasting ink supply!

As for those who do not believe, it makes no difference to them whether you warn them or do not warn them, they will not believe. Allah has sealed up their hearts and hearing and over their eyes is a blindfold. They will have a terrible punishment. (Surat al-Baqara, 6-7)   … They have hearts with which they do not understand. They have eyes with which they do not see. They have ears with which they do not hear. Such people are like cattle. No, they are even further astray! They are the unaware. (Surat al-A‘raf, 179)   Even if We opened up to them a door into heaven, and they spent the day ascending through it, they would only say: "Our eyesight is befuddled! Or rather we have been put under a spell!" (Surat al-Hijr, 14-15)

the RAF.

RAF used scientific advancements to detect U-boats. They used ASV radars and Leigh Searchlights that made detection of U-boats at night possible. Once a U-boat was located, an attack would be carried out using conventional weapons and torpedoes. The RAF did not have to worry about never seeing a U-boat as U-Boats had to surface in order to recharge their batteries. The

The educated man, habitually, almost without noticing it, sees the present as something that grows out of a long perspective of centuries. In my the minds of my RAF hearers this perspective simply did not exist. It seemed to me that they did not really believe that we have any reliable knowledge of historic man. But this was often curiously combined with a conviction that we knew a great deal about Prehistoric Man: doubtless because Prehistoric Man is labelled "Science" (which is reliable) whereas Napoleon or Julius Caesar is labelled as "History" (which is not.

The fondness of Britons for the uninhibited pilots was reciprocated by most of the Americans. Even those who had no real interest in aiding the British cause when they first enlisted in the RAF found themselves admiring the bravery and determination of the public in standing up to Hitler. “They were, without a shadow of a doubt, the most courageous people that I have ever known,” said one American. “Although their cities were in shambles, I never heard one Briton lose faith.” Another U.S. pilot declared: “To fight side by side with these people was the greatest of privileges.” After the war, Bill Geiger, who’d been a student at California’s Pasadena City College before he came to Britain, recalled the exact moment when he knew that the British cause was his as well. Leaving a London tailor’s shop, where he had just been measured for his RAF uniform, he noticed a man working at the bottom of a deep hole in the street, surrounded by barricades. “What’s he doing?” Geiger asked a policeman. “Sir,” the bobby replied, “he’s defusing a bomb.” Everyone standing there—the bobby, pedestrians, the man in the hole—was “so cool and calm and collected,” Geiger remembered. He added: “You get caught up in that kind of courage, and then pretty soon you say, ‘Now I want to be a part of this. I want to be part of these people. I want to be a part of what I see here and what I feel here.’ ” AS

ON A WARM, drowsy afternoon in early September, Ed Murrow, Vincent Sheean, and Ben Robertson, a correspondent for the New York newspaper PM, stopped at the edge of a field several miles south of London. The three had spent the day driving down the Thames estuary in Murrow’s Talbot Sunbeam roadster, enjoying the sun and looking for dogfights between Spitfires and Messerschmitts. Their search had been fruitless, and they stopped to buy apples from a farmer. Stretching out on the field to eat them, they drowsily listened to the chirp of crickets and buzzing of bees. The war seemed very far away. Within minutes, however, it returned with a vengeance. Hearing the harsh throb of aircraft engines, the Americans looked up at a sky filled with wave after wave of swastika-emblazoned bombers that clearly were not heading for their targets of previous days—the coastal defenses and RAF bases of southern England. Following the curve of the Thames, they were aimed straight at London. In minutes the sky over the capital was suffused with a fiery red glow; black smoke billowed up into a vast cloud that blanketed much of the horizon. When shrapnel from antiaircraft guns rained down around the American reporters, they dived into a nearby ditch, where, stunned, they watched the seemingly endless procession of enemy aircraft flying north. “London is burning. London is burning,” Robertson kept repeating. Returning to the city, they found flames sweeping through the East End, consuming dockyards, oil tanks, factories, overcrowded tenements, and everything else in their path. Hundreds of people had been killed, thousands injured or driven from their homes. Under a blood-red moon, women pushed prams piled high with their salvaged belongings. That horrific evening marked the beginning of the Blitz: from September 7 on, London would endure fifty-seven straight nights of relentless bombing. Until then, no other city in history had ever been subjected to such an onslaught. Warsaw and Rotterdam had been heavily bombed by the Germans early in the war, but not for the length of time of the assault on London. Although

在以无线电为基础的精密导航和着陆系统运用之前，飞行员不得不依赖目视指示器来帮助他们飞回机场。为了能在空中定位跑道准备着陆，飞行员会利用地标，这些地标在空中就能识别。例如，从东面飞入伦敦希思罗机场的航线上就有这样一个标准的地标，它是一个巨型的储气罐。很不幸的是，在同一方位还有另外一个看上去差不多的储气罐，而它指向的则是诺霍特（Northolt）的英国皇家空军（RAF）基地。有一位隶属于美国航空（US Airline）的飞行员曾经驾驶着波音707路过此地，目的地为希思罗机场，结果，他认错了储气罐，最后降落在了诺霍特。这造成了非常巨大的麻烦。起飞时，飞机需要的跑道长度要比降落时的长。而对于一架波音707来说，诺霍特的跑道太短了，无法起飞。 最后，大家不得不把飞机上能拆的都拆了，从座椅到厨房，这样飞机才得以勉强起飞。当地的传言说，人们在跑道附近办公区的屋顶上发现了轮胎的印记，从印记的形态来看，像是飞机费尽了周折才得以升空。在这次事件之后，为了区分两个储气罐，它们被刷上了不同的记号。就比如那个希思罗储气罐，人们给它刷上了字母LH——如果你坐火车经过伦敦西区的索撤尔（Southall），你依然能看见它。

Totò Riina: 'Per fare la pace prima bisogna fare la guerra.

Many at the State Department think its their job, not the Army's, to develop cultural and regional expertise and relationships. In such quarters, the RAF concept looks less like an innovative approach to global risk management than yet another military effort to replace diplomats with soldiers.

Where will that be?’ ‘Either Greenland or Iceland.’ ‘How shall we know which is which?’ ‘If it’s green, it’ll be Iceland. If it’s icy it’ll be Greenland.

The RAF used scientific advancements to detect U-boats. They used ASV radars and Leigh Searchlights that made detection of U-boats at night possible. Once a U-boat was located, an attack would be carried out using conventional weapons and torpedoes. The RAF did not have to worry about never seeing a U-boat as U-Boats had to surface in order to recharge their batteries. The aerial depth charge made it very difficult for the U-boats to stay in one place for a long period of time. After

Nearly six weeks of hard fighting resulted in No 303 Sqn achieving the top score for any RAF fighter unit of the Battle of Britain - 126 confirmed kills – despite the squadron having only participated in the second half of the campaign! Urbanowicz,

When World War II found his son Christopher in the R.A.F., Tolkien wrote to him that he couldn’t be more horrified if a hobbit had learned to ride a Nazgul in order to liberate the Shire.

Bomber Command was very well served by its aircrew, and with a few exceptions very badly served by its senior officers, in the Second World War.The gulf between the realities in the sky and the rural routine of headquarters was too great for most of the staff to bridge...senior officers were unwilling to face unacceptable realities...Surviving aircrew often feel deeply betrayed by criticism of the strategic air offensive.It is disgraceful that they were never awarded a Campaign Medal after surviving the extraordinary battle that they fought for so long against such odds,and in which so many of them died.One night after I visited a much-decorated pilot in the north of England in the course of writing this book, he rove me to the station...A teacher by profession, he thought nothing of the war for years afterwards.Then a younger generation of his colleagues began to ask with repetitive, inquisitive distaste:'...How could you have flown over Germany night after night to bomb women and children?'...more than thirty years after, his memories of war haunt him.It is wrong that it should be so.He was a brave man who achieved an outstanding record in the RAF.The aircrew...went out to do what they were told had to be done for the survival of Britain and for Allied victory.Historic judgements on the bomber offensive can do nothing to mar the honor of such an epitaph.

disaster began at the end of September with an attack by RAF Bomber Command which drained the Dortmund-Ems canal.

Sir Roy Fedden headed the British team sent to defeated Germany by Sir Stafford Cripps. Fedden, a slim, elegant, clean-shaven man whose photographs usually reveal an expression of focused determination, showed keen intelligence and a fascination with car and aircraft engines at an early age. Passionately fond of his wife Norah Crew, and somehow finding time between engine experiments to sail and fish, Fedden, 60 years of age in 1945, attacked his task with customary gusto. Fedden Years earlier, Erhardt Milch and Hermann Goering, to Fedden's astonishment, permitted him to tour no less than 17 of their secret aeronautics facilities when he visited Germany in 1937 and 1938. The Luftwaffe leaders hoped to overawe Fedden with the potential of German military aircraft design, and thus cause him to influence the British government to reach an accommodation with the Third Reich. Fedden, in fact, urged the English leadership to modernize their aircraft design to match the Germans' potential and was fired.               Realizing their error several years later, the government re-employed Fedden in 1944, and a mix of aeronautics engineers, scientists, and RAF officers comprised Fedden's team.