The Territorial Air Force- The RAF's Voluntary Squadrons 1926-1957

To date, little has been written about the Territorial Air Force as a voluntary military organisation and no sustained analysis of its recruitment and social composition undertaken. Made up of three different parts, the Auxiliary Air Force, the Special Reserve and the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, these three separate and different groups have not featured significantly in existing literature. This book will present the history of the Territorial Air Force from its creation in the early 1920s until 1957. It will consider the ideas behind the formation of two different types of reserve for the RAF and it will examine the way in which men were recruited for the three different groups. Woven throughout the text will be an analysis of how the volunteers joined, and what kinds of men were accepted into the organisations as both pilots and officers.