page_title: RAF Regiment
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: RAF Regiment / History / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: An RAF Humber light reconnaissance car in Middelburg, Holland, November 1944. An RAF Humber light reconnaissance car in Middelburg, Holland, November 1944.
context_page_description: The Royal Air Force Regiment is part of the Royal Air Force and functions as a specialist corps founded by Royal Warrant in 1942. The Corps carries out soldiering tasks relating to the delivery of air power. Examples of such tasks are Non Combatant Evacuation Operations, recovery of downed aircrew, and in-depth defence of airfields by way of aggressively patrolling a large area of operations outside airfields in hostile environments. In addition the RAF Regiment provides Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to the British Army and Royal Marines, and provides flight size commitment to the Special Forces Support Group.
  The RAF Regiment Gunners are personnel trained in various disciplines such as infantry tactics, force protection, field craft, sniper, support Special Forces operations, CBRN defence, equipped with advanced vehicles and detection measures. RAF Regiment instructors are responsible for training all Royal Air Force personnel in basic force protection such as first aid, weapon handling and CBRN skills.
  The regiment and its members are known within the RAF as "The Regiment", "Rock Apes" or "Rocks".
context_section_description: During the Second World War, with its first headquarters established at RAF Belton Park, Grantham, Lincolnshire, the RAF Regiment came into existence, in name, on 1 February 1942. From the start it had 66,000 personnel drawn from the former Defence Squadrons Nos. 701–850. The new regiment was made up of field squadrons equipped with Morris Light Reconnaissance Cars, Humber Light Reconnaissance Cars and Otter Light Reconnaissance Cars. The light anti-aircraft squadrons were originally armed with Hispano 20 mm cannon and then the Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. Its role was to seize, secure and defend airfields to enable air operations to take place. Several parachute squadrons were formed to assist in the capture of airfields, a capability retained by No. II Squadron. It mounted the King's Guard/Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace for the first time on 1 April 1943. During the War the RAF Regiment grew to a force of over 80,000 men.
  In late June 1944, with the British Army fighting in Normandy where it was sustaining heavy losses and at the same time suffering from a severe shortage of manpower, it was decided to transfer 25,000 officers and men of the RAF Regiment to the army, mostly to the infantry and the Foot Guards, to be retrained.
  The Second World War campaign in north-eastern India and northern Burma was fought in jungle and mountains with few or non-existent roads and which facilitated the infiltration of enemy patrols behind front lines. This was overcome by holding defensive "boxes" mainly or entirely supplied by air. The defence of forward airfields close to the main army concentrations was vital to this tactic. A training school and depot for the RAF Regiment was established at Secunderabad in October 1942, to retrain former ground defence airmen. It had an assault course considered tougher than anything the army had in India. Six field squadrons and seventy AA flights were initially formed, containing 160 officers and 4,000 other ranks. Until mid-1944 the AA flights were equipped only with light machine guns, then with Hispano 20 mm cannon for the rest of the war. Regiment units defended airfields and forward mobile radar units in Arakan in the Arakan Campaign in late 1942 and early 1943.
  During the Battle of Imphal all supplies and reinforcements had to be flown in between 29 March and 22 June 1944 with RAF Regiment units providing vital airfield defence. Following the failure of the Japanese Operation U-Go it was decided to pursue the shattered remnants of the Japanese 15th Army into Burma during the monsoon, in average rainfall of 10 in (254 mm) per day and rifle flights were sometimes attached to advancing Indian Army and British East African units, to gain experience in the jungle. Units of 1307 Wing were flown into the newly captured and tactically vital Meiktila airfield on 1 March 1945. Only a roughly 1,076 sq yd (900 m²) box, shared with the army and some United States anti-aircraft artillery, could be held at night and the airfield had to be cleared of enemy each morning before flying could start. As one of the RAF Regiment's proudest battle honours, this three-week battle destroyed the Japanese hold on northern Burma.
  The RAF Regiment fought as field, armoured car and light anti-aircraft (LAA) squadrons and flights in North Africa, the Middle East, Italy, the Balkans and North Western Europe, as well as 68 LAA squadrons defending the UK against V1 attacks as part of Operation Diver, alongside the Royal Artillery's heavy anti-aircraft and LAA batteries.  Amongst other things, RAF Regiment units were the first British forces to reach Paris, amongst the first to enter Brussels, and Squadron Leader Mark Hobden and his force arrested Hitler's successor as Fuhrer, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, at his HQ in Flensburg.
  On 26 November 1944, a Me 262A-2a Sturmvogel of III/KG51 based at Hopsten/Rheine near Osnabruck was the first confirmed ground-to-air kill of a jet combat aircraft. The 262 was shot down by a 40/L60 40mm Bofors gun of B.11 Detachment of 2875 Squadron RAF Regiment, at the RAF forward airfield o
caption: An RAF Humber LRC in Middelburg, Netherlands during Operation Infatuate, November 1944
exif: {}