021670 - AIRLIFT FORCE: RAF Transport Command 1948 - 1967

By Colin Ovens

Consider, for a moment, these three Royal Air Force Command 

titles:- 

 "Royal Air Force Bomber Command"- a name that, for many, may generate imposing images of Wellingtons, Halifaxes, Stirlings, Lancasters, Mosquitos, Lincolns, Canberras, and the V-Bombers; 

 "Royal Air Force Fighter Command"- a Command title that readily conjures up exciting images of Hurricanes, Spitfires, Tempests, Meteors, Vampires, Hunters, and Lightnings; 

 "Royal Air Force Coastal Command"- a renowned name that may prompt dramatic over-water images of Sunderlands, Beaufighters, Mosquitos, Catalinas, Liberators, and Shackletons. 

Now, consider the title "Royal Air Force Transport Command"... to many readers this may prompt images of huge formations of Dakotas, disgorging paratroops over Normandy, Arnhem, or the Rhine; others will have a recollection of the Berlin Airlift. On the other hand, many of us will recall seeing, and ignoring, the occasional Argosy, Beverley, Britannia, Hastings, Comet, or, perhaps, a VC-10, in the static park at a Battle of Britain Open Day, while they aimed their cameras at the Hunters, Javelins, Lightnings, V-Bombers, or Shackletons on show- these were the exciting defenders of these isles; and those others..? "They're just superannuated airliners", as a school-friend airily dismissed Transport Command's contribution to a Battle of Britain Open Day, at RAF Biggin Hill in the mid-1960s, when we two were teenagers.