Winston Churchill broadcast a special radio appeal on behalf of the RAF Benevolent Fund on Battle of Britain Sunday, 1951. During the address he called on the British public to recognise the “debt we owe” to the young airmen of the Second World War. “The [...]
Photograph courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
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Lord Trenchard founded the Royal Air Force in 1918, in the last year of the First World War. Once the war had ended, he became acutely aware of the suffering of demobilized airmen. Unlike soldiers and sailors, airmen had no charitable fund of their own [...]
Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
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Air Chief Marshall Sir Thomas Kennedy was Controller of the RAF Benevolent Fund from 1988 to 1993. In these archive video clips, from Sir Thomas’ time as Controller, he talks about the kinds of people we help, and the method in which applications for assistance [...]
Film courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
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The RAF Benevolent Fund was originally known as the RAF Memorial Fund, as one of its founding objectives was to construct a monument to all the airmen who had perished during World War One. The memorial was completed in 1923, and can still be seen on [...]
Picture by Tom Sullam
Before the RAFBF’s present ‘Heart Roundel’ logo, the RAF Benevolent Fund used the Pelican Crest, adopted in 1976 after years of negotiation with the Royal College of Arms. The design, the ‘Pelican in Piety’, was chosen because the RAFBF felt it symbolized the care which [...]
In 1934, Air Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding was appointed to the RAF Benevolent Fund council, in his capacity as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Fighter Command. He was dismayed at first to find much of the council in favour of a major public appeal for funds. Dowding [...]
Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
Colonel T E Lawrence was always aware of the value of the RAF Benevolent Fund. He observed distress in others and brought cases personally to the attention of then RAFBF secretary, Colonel Burch. Two letters from Lawrence of Arabia are still preserved at the RAFBF headquarters [...]
Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum
To mark our 90th anniversary we have released these striking archive adverts, which the RAF Benevolent Fund placed in newspapers and magazines during and after World War Two. The adverts present a fascinating window into the past, when a country in its moment of greatest peril [...]
30 RAF servicemen died on exercise in 1965 when their Handley Page Hastings aircraft crashed. This terrible accident confirmed the need for the RAF Benevolent Fund to set away money for disasters which were quite unforeseeable. By 1969 we had allocated £60,000 in assistance to the [...]
Did you know: The Hastings was the predecessor to the Lockheed Hercules in RAF service and was heavily involved in the Berlin Airlift. The Hastings pictured here is in Christmas Island, 1956.
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