Royal Canadian Air Force

Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), Canadian armed force in charge of that nation’s air defense. Since its inception in 1924, the RCAF has served Canadians in peace and war. It played a vital role in the Second World War, becoming the fourth-largest Allied air force, and reached its “golden age” in the late 1950s, with dozens of combat squadrons on the front lines of the Cold War. The term “Royal,” dropped from the name in 1968, was returned to the air force in 2011.

First World War

Aviation as a major part of a nation’s military forces had yet to be proven when Canada entered the First World War on August 4, 1914. The following month, the Canadian Aviation Corps (CAC) was created almost on a whim by the mercurial Minister of Militia and Defence, Sir Sam Hughes. The three-man, one-aircraft Corps virtually disintegrated upon its arrival in England and saw no service whatsoever.

A trickle of Canadian aviators were recruited directly, or transferred from service in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, into either England’s Royal Flying Corps (RFC) or Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). With the implementation in January 1917 of a large-scale, Canada-based flight training scheme, appropriately named the RFC Canada, the trickle became a flood. Most of the graduates would serve in the Royal Air Force (RAF), created with the amalgamation of the RFC and RNAS in April 1918. By the end of the war approximately 20,000 Canadians had flown as part of a British Empire flying service, and about 1,500 died during their service.

Canadian flyers established a record second to none with individuals such as Raymond Collishaw, William “Billy” Bishop, and William “Billy” Barker being among the top scoring Allied “aces” of the war. Bishop, Barker, and Alan McLeod, an 18-year-old flyer from Manitoba, were awarded the Victoria Cross—Britain’s highest award for military valour—for their actions in the air.

RCAF launched

A short-lived Royal Canadian Naval Air Service (RCNAS) and an England-based Canadian Air Force were casualties of the rapid demobilization of military forces after the war. Between 1919 and 1924 Canada wrestled with creating a policy to govern the field of aviation, which few citizens, and even fewer politicians, understood. Thanks to the efforts of people such as John Armistead Wilson, a career public servant, an Air Board was created as an interim measure to develop aviation policy, rules, and regulations. A Canadian Air Force (CAF) was re-established as a “flying militia” using wartime flyers and surplus British aircraft. In 1923, the Air Board joined with the Department of Militia and Defence and the Department of the Naval Service to form the Department of National Defence (DND). The CAF was placed under a Director and made responsible to the Chief of the General Staff for the control of both military and civil aeronautics.

On April 1, 1924, the air service was renamed the Royal Canadian Air Force—the “Royal” sobriquet having been approved by King George V in 1923. The RCAF consisted of a permanent full-time air element, a Non-Permanent Active Air Force (NPAAF) intended to train for a few weeks each year, and a Reserve Air Force to be called upon during national emergencies.

Throughout the 1920s, the RCAF focused on Civil Government Air Operations. It used small detachments—normally one or two aircraft and a handful of personnel—for diverse purposes such as aerial mapping, spotting forest fires, fisheries patrols, assisting government departments, and exploring the feasibility of flying in the Canadian north through undertakings such as the Hudson Strait Expedition in 1927–28. Often operating from makeshift camps, the RCAF came to be symbolized by the ubiquitous “flying boat” and a can-do practical approach that led to the nickname of “bush pilots in uniform.”

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Limited military training was conducted, until the Great Depression in the early 1930s forced a drastic reduction of government spending. Almost overnight, the RCAF was reduced in size by one-fifth, and its budget was halved, forcing a shift from civil operations to flying in support of military requirements. Scarce resources were used to form NPAAF squadrons in major cities to provide a nucleus for future RCAF growth.

By 1935 an improved economy and the growing importance of aerial defence brought increased funding for the RCAF, allowing limited but steady expansion. In 1938, the Chief of the Air Staff became directly responsible to the Minister of National Defence, thus making the Air Force a separate service equal in status to the Canadian Army and Royal Canadian Navy. That same year, a re-organization led to the creation of Western and Eastern Air Commands. In the midst of these changes, when war erupted in September 1939, the RCAF could only muster 4,061 personnel and 270 aircraft, of which only 19 could be considered reasonably modern.

Second World War

In 1939, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King agreed to support a major air training scheme located throughout the Commonwealth, but with its largest component in Canada. Signed on December 17, 1939, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) resulted in a rapid expansion of the RCAF, as aviation schools were built throughout the country. Of the more than 131,000 airmen trained in Canada, almost 73,000 were Canadian, and a large portion would fulfill their wartime service in Canada as part of the Home War Establishment engaged in training and support tasks. Other airmen found themselves in the thick of combat engaging German submarines in the Atlantic, while, on the West Coast, RCAF personnel operating with the American military helped remove Japanese forces from the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.

The first three RCAF squadrons were sent to England during the first six months of 1940, with No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron arriving just in time to participate in the Battle of Britain. The RCAF Overseas grew rapidly, establishing a strong presence within British formations such as Fighter, Coastal, and Transport Commands. By far the greatest concentration of Canadian airmen served within No. 6 (RCAF) Group, Bomber Command. Although there would be a total of 47 RCAF Squadrons, as well as numerous other units, serving in theatres of war ranging from Europe to the Far East, the vast majority of Canadians abroad served in RAF organizations.

By late 1944, the RCAF reached its peak as the fourth largest Allied air force with more than 215,000 personnel in uniform, including about 17,000 members of the Women’s Division. By the time the war ended, more than 18,000 members of the RCAF had given their lives in the service of their country.