In the first 80 years of its existence as an independent air arm the Royal Air Force has gained major achievements in both war and peace. To mark the 80th anniversary of its formation in 1998, aviation author Roy Conyers Nesbit has written this illustrated history of Britain's junior service. Covering all the main campaigns and historical events, the concise narrative relates the history of the RAF from its formation on 1 April 1918, through the testing years of the interwar period, the desperate struggle of World War II, and the precarious peace of the nuclear age, and concludes with the high-tech RAF of the late-1990s.