Occasionally, you need to get out of your comfort zone and see what else is out there. I was intrigued to read about the Royal Air Force’s reconnaissance and support projects as I didn’t know much about them. When the 336-page, hardcover book arrived, I questioned why I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and figured I could skim the pages. Wow, I was wrong and ended up reading every single word and devoured the book. Author Chris Gibson is an amazing writer, who writes from a position of knowledge born of passion and engages the writer with his great story telling ability.

Initially I had an issue with the title of the book, as it lends itself to self-pity and relegation to a subordinate role. As I mentioned above, the author didn’t have this problem and explained the title right away,

Military analysts, the pundits of all things martial, talk of the teeth and tail in a country’s armed forces. These are loose descriptions that delineate the fighting from the support arms. The teeth/sharp end/war fighting forces, call them what you like, invariably receive the accolades and attention from the media while the support, the tail, without which the teeth cannot bite, work away in the background. They Also Serve examines that tail.

This book is Chris Gibson’s seventh in the RAF Since 1945 series (I just made that up based on his prolific literary history on British aerospace subjects). He states that the modern RAF has direct links to World War II and 1945 is where he starts his journeys. He also admits that support roles are typically the first to be cut from the military budget (and the shortsightedness of governments is not unique to any country).

In his Personal Prologue,

’Doing nothing as usual, Chris?’ asked Jonny as I stood on the deck of the drilling rig Ocean Patriot. ‘I’m waiting for the crane.’ I did a lot of waiting in my time in the offshore drilling business, and so has Jonny, who replied ‘You’ll have a long wait. It’s nearly teatime and then there’s a chopper due.’ I replied with ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ Unimpressed by my quoting Milton, Jonny headed for the teashack. As I made my own way to the teashack, I thought ‘That’s not a bad title for a book.’ The book that you now hold, which examines the support aspects of the Royal Air Force.

He was correct in the title of this amazing book. And I partook in copious amounts of tea reading this book about the unglamourous, boring, yet imminently important aspects of the Royal Air Force’s success since 1945.

They Also Serve - RAF Reconnaissance and Support Projects Since 1945 is composed of the following eleven chapters and three appendices:

• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
  1. Low and Local – Tactical Reconnaissance
  2. High and Far – Strategic Reconnaissance
  3. Aster to ASTOR – Radar Reconnaissance
  4. Cold Warfare – Weather Reconnaissance
  5. Dust Catching – Nuclear Reconnaissance
  6. Mutton to Wedgetail – UK AEW
  7. The Royal – VIP Flying
  8. Harrow to VC10 – the RAF’s First Tankers
  9. A Bonus, not a Substitute – Freddie and the Tankers
  10. The Sea Shall Not Have Them – Air-Sea Rescue
  11. The Casualties of War – Evacuation by Air
• Conclusion
• Appendix One – The Circulation Controlled Rotor
• Appendix Two – When the Balloon Goes Up
• Appendix Three – The Secret Listeners
• Glossary
• Index

The Duke of Wellington surmised, “The whole art of war consists in getting at what is on the other side of the hill.” The author states that in the 1950s, “this could have been paraphrased by substituting ‘Iron Curtain’ for ‘hill’”. Half of this book is dedicated to information collecting, whether photographic, radar, weather, nuclear, AEW (airborne early warning) – reconnaissance to find, learn about, and fix the enemy.

Photography and flying machines go hand-in-hand, be it balloons being used to photograph enemy positions in the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War or Lockheed SR-71s over North Vietnam. However, aerial photography and photographic reconnaissance became a war-winning tool during the Great War. With the original maps of the area along the Western Front rendered useless by bombturbation (a geological term describing a landscape completely reworked by humans at war) new maps showing the networks of trenches were required.

This book is a good mix of the technical details of the airframes, interspersed with details of what they were accomplishing through the particular machines, science, and examples. It is amazing how much our modern society depended on World War II aviation. Weather, mapping, advances in data collection, etc can be traced to smart, forward-thinking people figuring out problems. A lot of what we take for granted with our smart phones is the result of weather predictions, mapping, knowing what is around the corner, was once large, fuel-burning aircraft figuring out how to see the other side of the hill. The Falklands War in 1982 is used several times to illustrate the RAF’s need to conduct reconnaissance of the objective areas, move assets into place, then fight over 8,000 miles away. This is now taken for granted, but it was an immense undertaking that deserves study and appreciation for what was accomplished.

The chapter on weather reconnaissance is fascinating in not only how weather affects aircraft and military operations, but how contrails were formed and how to avoid the tell-tale contrail pointing to the aircraft. The RAF’s night bombing raid with 795 aircraft against Nuremberg of 30/31 March 1944 resulted in the loss of 96 aircraft (the RAF lost more aircraft on this raid in one night than the USAAF lost on their most disastrous raid on Schweinfurt/Regensberg). One of the contributing factors was a cloudless night, moonlight and perfect conditions to create contrails. The RAF and USAAF (then USAF) spent a lot of time and treasure to find ways to prevent contrail formations. Methods were discovered, but the cost prohibitive, and other means were found to fly under the contrail formation zones when necessary. One huge byproduct of this research was the discovery, and subsequent use of smoke trails for aircraft display teams.

Nuclear reconnaissance is intriguing, and the methods used to gather data are equally so. Besides thinking about how to decontaminate a huge aircraft like the Vulcan, the technology invested into detection is amazing. One of the four ways to detect nuclear detonation is seismic. This is an example of the genius of the author describing seismic detection. University of Aberdeen Professor RV Jones was puzzled by an event he picked up routinely on his seismograph.

Somewhat obvious amongst the seismic noise of daily life, the event occurred at the same time every weekday morning and turned out to be the Chaplain of King’s College Chapel placing a large bible on the lectern before morning prayers started at 0830hrs. The chapel is 300 yards (274m) from the Frasier Noble Building (where the seismograph was located), demonstrating how sensitive seismographs could be even in the 1970s.

If you want to know the other three detection methods, pick up a copy of this book!

I could write a short book about this book as it is so full of great information. Other interesting chapters include the following tidbits. A lot of RAF missions have to do with protecting their air space, and the large bodies of water surrounding the United Kingdom, particularly the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland and UK) Gap. This required reconnaissance, air-to-air refueling, command and control, air defense and interdiction aircraft, and rescue services (covered very well in the chapter on Air-Sea Rescue – The Sea Shall Not Have Them). As a side note, it is interesting that the Search and Rescue mission was privatized in 2016 with specific Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) remaining a small, but crucial mission specialty of the RAF.

The chapter dealing with flying Royals and VIPs is interesting in its evolution. Like the rest of the book, the author adds color that really adds to the history. The Queen’s Flight/Royal Squadron Bae.146 CC2 was based on the Bae Statesman “the VIP-configured variant of the 146. Bespoke interiors could include facilities for carriage of cars or horses!”

For sake of brevity, and not making this a book report, the chapters on air refueling, evacuation by air, and other support missions are fascinating and well worth the book’s purchase price. The appendices are also to be devoured and not overlooked. The circulation controlled rotor is as convoluted and revolutionary as it sounds; using balloons for surveillance proving something old is new again, and a few brief pages about ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) is a good, basic primer.

Aircraft modelers will have a lot of inspiration for their models, primarily RAF, but also USAAF and USAF aircraft as the development and technology were often mirrored and shared. The photographs are appropriate for their eras – black and white, then color. There are a lot of beautiful schemes on interesting aircraft, especially as a lot of British aircraft can be described as so ugly that they’re beautiful. This book will appeal to both readers interested in airframes, missions, and the creativity used to create indispensable technologies.

The cost of this book is a purchase well justified if you have an interest in support aviation since 1945, particularly in the RAF. The description of science and approaches to solving problems is well worth the price. I now want to find the other six books in this series as it will fill a large hole in my aviation knowledge.

Profuse thanks to Casemate and IPMS/USA for providing the review sample.