News articles

Parade with Flypast over London to celebrate and commemorate RAF100

raf-baton-relay-beginsThis year has been full of amazing events celebrating our centenary RAF100, and the biggest one of them all is happening tomorrow, 10th July 2018. RAF100 celebrations began on 1st April 2018 when the Royal Air Force turned one-hundred, and one-hundred days later, the 10th July, our main celebrations in London take place. The RAF was founded on 1st April 1918 by merging the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service during the first world war. Since then, the RAF has been protecting Britain’s airspace and its people and has been operating around the world in many roles with numerous nations.

Since 1st April 2018 the RAF100 campaign has been in full swing with one-hundred days of special events, activities and other initiatives at local, regional, national and international levels, with more scheduled throughout 2018. People from all over the world have been commemorating with us and celebrating the outstanding efforts of the Royal Air Force and its personnel over the last 100 years, since its formation through to the role it played during the second world war and now to modern day operations.

raf-parade

raf-rugby-raf100

raf-sqn-ldr-stormtrooper-run

The centrepiece to mark this historic event will include a service at Westminster Abbey, a parade down The Mall followed by a flypast over central London. The parade starts at 11:25am with the flypast at 1:00pm, with up to one-hundred RAF aircraft flying over Buckingham Palace. The parade down The Mall will include up to thirteen-hundred serving personnel. It will be a momentous event showcasing our people and our prestigious aircraft. The aircraft include our historic BBMF aircraft, aircraft flown on recent operations and our very new Lightning, something you may not see all together for 100 years!

raf-personell

For one-hundred years our people have been at the forefront of what the RAF achieves. Over the last one-hundred, and more, days we have witnessed their dedication, pride and sheer hard work to organise all the events that have occurred at our stations, across the UK and abroad. As ever, the efforts of our serving personal and civil servants have been tremendous.

Aircraft-tourSome of the events that have taken place as part of our RAF100 celebrations include the Baton Relay, which has covered thousands of miles all over the world, local celebrations, sporting events, cake baking, charity fund raisers and the RAF100 Aircraft Tour which has already been to Cardiff, Wales and is currently in London until the end of the day; it will continue its venture to Newcastle in Northern Ireland, Birmingham, Glasgow and Manchester.

typhoon-raf-cosford

There have been a host of airshows, where our incredible aircraft and pilots have been displaying their capabilities, in particular at RAF Cosford and Shuttleworth’s airshow. Following 10th July, the action continues at the Royal International Air Tattoo on 13th – 15th July 2018, then Duxford airshow on 22nd September 2018. So, if you’ve already missed out there is still time to see these ones!

To keep updated on our incredible flypast over central London, on 10th July 2018, make sure to look up in the sky if you’re in London at 1pm, if not you will be able to tune in on BBC One and our Facebook Live, to find out more head over to our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

For more information head over to RAF100.