150 x 175 cm

The Royal Air Force (RAF) is celebrating its centenary year today. Happy Birthday !

This year also marks the 78th anniversary of the Battle of Britain , when the Air Force - supported by Polish, Czech and Slovak airmen – successfully defended the UK from a German Luftwaffe onslaught and caused the indefinite postponement of Adolf Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion.

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few,” Sir Winston Churchill said in tribute in the House of Commons on 20 August 1940.

Other famous missions followed, including the Dambusters raid led by wing commander Guy Gibson and deploying Barnes Wallis’s ingenious bouncing bomb, an endeavour that celebrated its 75th anniversary in May.