Last year we published the inaugural Spirit of the Air magazine to celebrate the enduring Heritage and Ethos of the Royal Air Force. In introducing the magazine, I said that we would publish again if people enjoyed reading it. We have received much enthusiastic feedback and have therefore decided to press ahead with more issues.

These days there is plenty of excellent information available electronically and this can be a quick and effective form of communication. However, not everyone in the Royal Air Force can easily access IT or would wish to use this communication method for lighter interest and leisure reading. We all lead busy lives and I believe our communication can be improved by the expansion of Spirit into a magazine, covering a variety of issues, which can be read or dipped into while grabbing a quick coffee.

For example, some of you will remember and still ask what happened to that excellent crewroom and coffee bar magazine called Air Clues. This was primarily a flight safety magazine but included wider interest reading and was replaced some eight years ago by the joint service flight safety magazine Aviate. My sense is that with the end of Air Clues, the Royal Air Force lost a good single-service communication forum. I am convinced there is a demand for an Air Clues ‘style’ magazine (but not covering fl ight safety as Aviate already does this well) for the Royal Air Force addressing more contemporary issues as well as our rich heritage. I intend that Spirit will meet this remit and plan to publish it on a bi-monthly basis. Spirit, together with UNeed2Know, the excellent RAF News, Air Power Review and our Internal Briefi ng Notes will provide the complementary elements of the Royal Air Force’s written communication media for you to be informed and hopefully enjoy.

This issue of Spirit does include contemporary items as well as those with a historical slant and we propose to develop this aspect of the magazine in the future.

We want to use Spirit to bring you features about air power and to tell you about the Royal Air Force’s involvement in operations. There will be features about new or updated equipment but more importantly, the focus will be on our people and what they are doing. There will be a lighter side as well. The quiz will test your knowledge while the stunning photography on every page will catch your eye. Items from the Air Clues archive will remind us of the valuable lessons learned by others which are a valuable way of improving our skills and professionalism.

We want to hear from you. Perhaps you have a job which is a bit unusual or outside the mainstream and therefore you could write us an article in the What it is like to be a . . . series. Would you like your station or unit to be featured in the magazine? What historical events would you like to share with a wider audience? Is there something you are working on that needs to be communicated? What would make this a better magazine and is there anything you really wish we had left out? We’d welcome letters and e-mails too for a letters page in future issues.

You can contact me or the team that has put together Spirit of the Air at the e-mail addresses shown below. We’d be delighted to hear from you.

Air Commodore R F Garwood,
Director of Air Staff (DAS)

FRONT COVER

Formation of Lightnings from the Lightning Training Flight (T4) and Nos 5 and 11 Squadrons (both F6s) over Spurn Point. The American P38 fi ghter was known by another name within the RAF. What was it and what other British fi ghter took the same name in the mid-1950s? See 20 questions on page 48 for the answers

Download Spirit of the Air, Volume 1, Number 1, 2006

PDF format, 8.4MB, 52Pages. Published by Royal Air Force.

Contents:

1 Foreword, CAS
4 News
6 RAF Odiham Earthquake Relief Team
13 RAF wargame
17 RAF Cranwell history
21 Why should we care about history?
25 I learnt about fl ying from that
26 W. B. Rhodes-Moorhouse, VC
28 They will always be remembered
32 Battle of Britain London Monument
36 Prince of Wales opens new RAF Memorial
39 What it’s like to be . . .
The RAF Commander at RAF Mildenhall
44 Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir John
Salmond
46 Book reviews
48 20 Questions

Foreword:
Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup

What does it mean to be an airman — to wear the light blue of the Royal Air Force? What are the characteristics that are integral and essential to our existence as a separate and distinct organisation? These are questions that may not trouble us on a daily basis; but they are questions that we should be able to answer if we are to operate with the confidence that is appropriate to the importance of our task. There are some defining characteristics that set us apart from the civilian elements in our society: the legal right under certain circumstances to use force, and the responsibilities that go with this; the risks that we necessarily bear, not just on operations but also on the realistic training that is essential if we are to be effective on those operations; the ‘unlimited liability’ that we assume for the protection of our society and way of life. All of these mark us as different from civilians, and drive many aspects of our culture and training. But they are characteristics that we share with our sister Services.

So what is it that differentiates us from the Royal Navy and the Army? We are of course part of one overall Defence enterprise, and we operate together in Joint campaigns.

To that extent the phrase “Independent Air Force” has little meaning these days; we are interdependent elements within the Joint team. But at the same time there is an important and enduring rationale for our three distinct Services.

It is simply this: fighting in each of the three environments — sea, land and air — is fundamentally different. It requires different aptitudes, different training, different equipment, different doctrine, different processes, different organisation, and so on. There are no neat dividing lines between the Services; there is considerable cross flow between them at the boundaries, and it is here in particular that Joint organisations can be useful. But at their heart, the three environments are fundamentally different. And it is this difference that defines us as airmen.

It is of course true that both the Navy and Army operate in the air — just as we do on the land — but only to a very limited extent. We are — and have to be — the experts on the use of the air for military purposes. This encompasses far more than just the physical act of flying, important though that is. It includes all of the myriad activities that are necessary if we are to make effective use of the air. We call it air mindedness; and it must be part of every one of us, no matter what our specialisation might be.

We develop air mindedness in part through our day-to-day activities, and of course through our crucial contribution to Joint operations. But we also need to take a wider perspective. We need a sense of our history and heritage; we need an understanding of the way in which future air warfare is driving our organisation and processes; we need a sense of what others are doing to contribute to our overall capability; we need a sense of the ethos and spirit that bind us together as airmen.

Spirit of the Air is one of the means to this end. It contributes to a better understanding of the environment that defines us, and to the development of the moral component of fighting power that is essential to our continued success: that is why you should read it.

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