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Old 23rd Apr 2018, 09:20
  #64 (permalink)  
pr00ne
 
Join Date: May 2003
Location: London/Oxford/New York
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Roving,

"The justification for scrapping the RAF Aux Air Squadrons in 1957 was that with the Hunter replacing the Vampire and Meteor, it would be too difficult to convert reservists to swept wing advanced jets."

A commonly held but inaccurate view. The RAuxAF flying squadrons, and the RNVR Air branch, were disbanded for two main reasons, one that they were simply running out of aircrew and with the doing away of National Service pilots they would not be able to field even one complete squadron with aircrew! The second was that the 1957 White paper was about to reduce Fighter Command massively in an ill guided rush to missiles, and an accurate recognition that the main Soviet threat to the UK was in intermediate range ballistic missiles, which all the Hunters and Javelins in the world could do nothing to protect against, so another 20 Auxiliary squadrons which would have to be re-equipped and some method of manning them found, was an obvious target. On top of that there was the Conservative mandate to reduce defence expenditure at the same time as spending an absolute fortune developing the thermonuclear weapon.
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