7 September 1963 On 7 September 1963, there was a secret meeting in Aden’s Crescent Hotel, between Colonel David Stirling, who had founded the Special Air Service (SAS) in 1942, Peter de la Billiere, a junior intelligence officer, Tony Boyle, a junior RAF officer, and Ahmed al-Shami, the foreign minister of the former Yemeni royalist…
30 November 1923 On 30 November 1923, forty aircraft from five R.A.F. squadrons began round the clock bombing sorties against two villages near the town of Samawah in southern Iraq. The air strikes continued for two days, resulting in the almost total destruction of the villages and a death toll officially estimated at 144 men,…
18 December 1922 On 18 December 1922, the RAF’s Deputy Director of Operations and Intelligence, submitted a report to the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Hugh Trenchard, suggesting possible ‘systems of attack against uncivilised tribes’. Britain was facing insurgencies across the Empire, and was particularly worried about the threat to continued British rule along…
18 November 1953 On 18 November 1953, the RAF commenced a massive carpet bombing operation against Mau Mau insurgents opposed to British rule in Kenya. Code-named Operation Mushroom, and deploying enormous quad engine Lincoln heavy bombers, the campaign was to see 900 sorties over the next two years dropping six million bombs, weighing 50,000 tons,…
9 October 1919 On 9 October 1919, sixteen RAF aircraft dropped incendiary bombs on several villages near Wana in Waziristan on India’s North West Frontier. The intent was to punish the entire population, as it was suspected that some of them had participated in armed resistance against British incursions into their territory. An unforgivable crime. …
12 September 1921 On Monday 12 September 1921, at 0530 hours the first pair of RAF biplane bombers, of Number 55 Squadron, took off from Mosul to take part in a surprise day long assault by mounted troops and aircraft on four Kurdish villages in the Harir Valley, some thirty miles north east of Erbil…
30 August 1930 On 30 August 1930, W.E. Johns, an R.A.F. captain and author of the Biggles adventure series, published an article for the weekly illustrated newspaper The Graphic, under the headline ‘Bombing the Afridis.’ He recounted how entire tribal areas on India’s North West Frontier would be bombed intensively as a collective punishment for failing to pay a…
16 August 1923 On 16 August 1923, the RAF conducted a surprise bombing attack on the home of the Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji in the Kurdish town of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq. He was becoming dangerously popular among a population who felt the British were cheating them of their independence and was suspected of conspiring against…
4 August 1930 On 4 August 1930, the R.A.F. commenced a nine day bombing campaign, deploying over 70 aircraft on 1,835 hours of sorties against Afridi villages, deemed to be unfriendly. Most of the settlements were located in the Bara Valley in the remote North West Frontier region of British India, although the surrounding valleys…
28 July 1943 At about 12.55 am on Wednesday 28 July 1943, RAF Pathfinder aircraft began to drop their target indicators, lighting up the German city of Hamburg. 791 aircraft had already bombed Hamburg three nights earlier [see 25 July 1943], and Bomber Command planners had been impressed with how well the city burned, killing…
