The Royal Air Force Regiment is part of the Royal Air Force and functions as a
specialist airfield defence corps founded by Royal Warrant in 1942.
The RAF Regiment is trained in CBRN defence and 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'. After a 32-week
trainee gunner course, its members are trained and equipped to prevent a
successful enemy attack in the first instance; minimise the damage caused by
a successful attack; and ensure that air operations can continue without delay in
the aftermath of an attack. RAF Regiment squadrons use aggressive defence tactics
whereby they actively seek out infiltrators in a large area surrounding
airfields. History
The genesis of the RAF Regiment was with the creation of No. 1 Armoured Car
Company RAF in 1921 for operations in Iraq, followed shortly afterwards by No.
2 Armoured Car Company RAF and No. 3 Armoured Car Company RAF. These were
equipped with Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars and were highly successful in ground
combat operations throughout the Middle East in the 1920s and 1930s. The RAF
Regiment came into existence, in name, on 5 February 1942. From the start it
had both field squadrons and light anti-aircraft squadrons, the latter
originally armed with Hispano 20mm 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 seizing of airfields and No. II Squadron retains this
capability. 284 Field Squadron was the first RAF unit to arrive in West Berlin
in 1945, to secure RAF Gatow. During the Second World War, with its
first headquarters established at RAF Alma Park, Grantham, Lincolnshire and
its first depot at nearby RAF Belton Park the RAF Regiment grew to a force of
over 80,000 men in 280 squadrons of 185 men each. Squadrons usually consisted of
a Headquarters Flight, three Rifle Flights, an Air-Defence Flight, and an
Armoured-Car Flight. The flights were grouped together into wings as needed.
It also operated six Armoured Car Squadrons to provide an area response
capability to several RAF stations. In late June 1944, with the British Army
fighting in Normandy where they were sustaining heavy losses and at the same
time suffering from a severe shortage of manpower and therefore desperate for
more men, 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. They proved to be of exceptionally high quality.
The Second World War campaign in 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
strategy. A training school and depot for the 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 allied offensive 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 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 ten inches 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 strategically vital
Meiktila airfield on 1 March 1945. Only a roughly nine hundred metre square 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 Regiment's proudest battle honours this
three week battle destroyed the Japanese hold on northern Burma.
King George VI became Air Commodore-in-Chief of the Regiment in
1947. He later decided to present his King's Colour in 1952, on the 10th
anniversary of the Regiment's founding. The King, however, died around this time
and Queen Elizabeth instead presented the Queen's Colour a year later.
In 1974, the Rapier surface-to-air missile system entered service with the
RAF Regiment, and equipped four squadrons protecting four airfields in
RAF Germany. Light Armoured Squadrons, equipped with
FV101 Scorpion and FV107 Scimitar light Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance - -
continued to be operated into the 1980s. Also from the 1980s there were 3
Squadrons who were also equipped with Rapier and defended the USAF Airbases of
RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Fairford, RAF Mildenhall, RAF Bentwaters, and RAF
Woodbridge. These units were disbanded at the end of the Cold War.
Formerly the RAF's firefighters were also members of the RAF Regiment,
although they are now independent of it. In July 2004 it was announced that the
role of providing Ground Based Air Defence was to be transferred to the
British Army's Royal Artillery and the four Royal Air Force Regiment air
defence squadrons were to be disbanded. The Regiment has a museum at RAF
Honington near Bury St Edmunds. The RAF Regiment mounts annually the King's
Guard/Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace, Windsor
Castle and the Tower of London, with the first occasion being on 1 April 1943.
= Origin of the "Rock Ape" nickname= In the past the nickname "Rock Ape" has
been attributed to their traditional role guarding areas of Gibraltar, but
this is not so. The term came into use after an accident in the Western Aden
Protectorate in November 1952. Two Regiment officers serving with the APL
at Dhala decided to amuse themselves by going out to shoot some of the hamadryas
baboons. The officers drew rifles and split up to hunt the apes. In the
semi-darkness one of the officers fired at a moving object in the distance. When
he reached the target he discovered he had shot the other officer. After
emergency treatment Flight Lieutenant Percy Henry Mason survived to return to
service a few months later. When asked why he had fired at his friend by a
board of inquiry the officer replied that his target had "looked just like a
rock ape" in the half light. The remark soon reverberated around the RAF and it
was not long before the term was in general use.
Another version of the nickname rationale was that Reich Minister of
Propaganda Goebbels heard the legend that, if the barbary apes on the Rock of
Gibraltar ever left, the British Empire would crumble. At that stage of the war,
when things weren't going too well for the Axis forces, he decided that a
propaganda coup was required and reportedly sent a commando raid to
eradicate the apes. The story goes that Winston Churchill heard of the mission
and immediately tasked the RAF Regiment with protecting the apes, and thus the
nickname was born. Organisation and role
The RAF Regiment comes under command of 2 Group, Air Command. Its members are
organised into ten regular squadrons, - Nos 1, 2, 3, 15, 26, 27, 34, 51, 58 and
63/Queen's colour Squadron - of which eight are field squadrons and two are
specialist CBRN, plus four Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment squadrons.
These are intended to counter ground-based threats to
overseas/deployed RAF assets and, to this end, are trained as mobile infantry
to move on foot, or in helicopters and protected mobility vehicles, to defend
airfields and landing sites. The large area surrounding airfields means RAF
Regiment rifle flights often spend long periods of time deployed on the ground
deterring and detecting potential attackers. Since 2007, some 10 RAF
Regiment gunners have been killed in action, and many seriously injured, in
conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, over the same period,
three Military Crosses have been won by RAF Regiment members for conspicuous
bravery. Members of the RAF Regiment are equipped
with a range of direct and indirect fire systems and surveillance and night
vision equipment. The way a field squadron operates depends upon the
threat they are facing, mounting defensive positions or aggressive
patrolling outside the airfield boundary. As air bases are fixed and
supporting elements are unable to redeploy quickly, field squadrons must
engage an attacking adversary at the earliest opportunity to prevent air
operations from being disrupted. Field Squadrons are divided into
flights, which are equivalent in size to an army platoon. Each squadron contains
several rifle flights, whose task is to engage the enemy at close range, and a
support weapons flight, which provides fire support to the rifle flights using
machine guns, mortars and snipers. The field squadrons are 171 strong
making them larger than an infantry company in the British Army.Not all
personnel on an RAF Regiment squadron are trained gunners but can be involved
in specialist support services such as administrators and drivers. A typical
RAF Regiment squadron has support elements from the RAF but these
personnel do not always deploy on patrols and other combat operations. All
RAF Regiment personnel are male as it is British Government policy that women
cannot serve in close combat units. There are approximately 2,000 regular
airmen, 300 regular officers, and 500 reservists.
Since 1990, the RAF Regiment has conducted operations in Afghanistan,
Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus, Falkland Islands, Iraq, Kosovo, Kuwait, Northern
Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Mali and Sierra Leone. Some RAF Regiment officers and
Senior Non Commissioned Officers have been seconded to the Army in roles such
as Forward Air Controllers with some Tactical Air Control Parties that
co-ordinate Close Air Support for the ground forces. The Regiment provide
staff for the Defence CBRN Centre at Winterborne Gunner which trains
personnel from all three Services and the civilian police in CBRN defence
skills; a flight of some 40 RAF Regiment personnel forms part of the tri-service
Special Forces Support Group. Perhaps the most important RAF Regiment role is
in providing Ground Defence Training to the rest of the Royal Air Force. All RAF
personnel receive Initial Ground Defence Training as part of their Basic Training
from RAF Regiment Instructors. Each year all RAF personnel are required to
undertake annual training in Skill At Arms, CBRN, First Aid, and Post Attack
Recovery. This is known as Common Core Skills. This training is run by RAF
Regiment Flight on RAF Stations. Additional training is given prior to
deployment. In 2011, as part of the Strategic
Defence and Security Review, it was announced that from December 2011, the
CBRN role undertaken by the Joint CBRN Regiment, a combined Army/RAF unit,
would be transferred to the RAF Regiment under the new Defence CBRN Wing, formed
from 26 Squadron, 27 Squadron and 2623 Squadron. The army retains involvement
through the continued use of the Royal Yeomanry to provide trained battlefield
casualty replacements. The RAF Regiment's basic training
increased to 32 weeks to incorporate the specialist training centred on air-aware
soldiering. Since the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the RAF
Regiment have recently begun a large reservist recruitment drive for their
reserve field squadrons calling for civilians with and without military
experience. In November 2013, The Queens Colour and
No’s 1 and 27 Squadron have already had their new colours presented, however
No’s 16, 37 and 48 squadrons have been disbanded
Current RAF Regiment units Field Squadrons
1 Squadron II Squadron
15 Squadron 34 Squadron
51 Squadron 63 Squadron
CBRN Squadrons 26 Squadron
27 Squadron Other units
Force Protection RAF Force Protection - HQ at RAF
Honington No. 2 Force Protection Wing - RAF
Leeming No. 3 Force Protection Wing - RAF Marham
No. 4 Force Protection Wing - RAF Brize Norton
No. 5 Force Protection Wing - RAF Lossiemouth
No. 7 Force Protection Wing - RAF Coningsby
No. 20 RAF Regiment Wing - RAF Honington CBRN
Royal Auxiliary Air Force Regiment Squadrons
501 County of Gloucestershire Squadron RAuxAF Regiment
504 County of Nottingham Squadron RAuxAF [Regiment Flight only]
2503 Squadron 2620 Squadron
2622 Squadron 2623 Squadron
No. 609 Squadron RAF RAuxAF Squadron Royal
Notable former members British comedian Tony Hancock joined the
RAF Regiment in 1942. British football manager Brian Clough
also served with the RAF Regiment during his national service
See also Aden Protectorate Levies
Band of the Royal Air Force Regiment Iraq Levies
References Bibliography
Warwick, Nigel W M. CONSTANT VIGILANCE The RAF Regiment in the Burma Campaign.
Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Aviation. ISBN 978 1 84415 500 2.
Retrieved 8 February 2014. Kingsley M Oliver, Through Adversity:
History of the Royal Air Force Regiment, Forces & Corporate Publishing Ltd.,
1997. ISBN 0-9529597-0-4. Tim Ripley, 'RAF Regiment to boost
equipment and recruitment', Jane's Defence Weekly, 16 April 2008, p. 10.
Deeley, Graeme, 'Never Not Ready: The History of RAF Regiment Parachute Units
1942 - 2012', Barney Books, 2012, ISBN 978-1-906542-49-8.
External links The RAF Regiment from WWII To The
Present Day Official RAF Regiment homepage
RAF Regiment History The Official RAF Regiment Association
website regiment.net/raf_regiment_video_page.htm
RAF Regiment Video from The RAFRegiment.net Web site)