Into the Remote Places

The full story of the RAF in the Middle East from its earliest days in Arabia to the present-day operations in Syria and Iraq: a story of innovation, bravery, and British power overseas.

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The Royal Air Force has been an ever-present projection of British power and interests in the Middle East from the earliest days of the Royal Flying Corps' RFC Middle East HQ to today's 83 Air Expeditionary Group. Whilst operations and theatres such as the derring-do of the Western Front, the sacrifice of the Few during the Battle of Britain or the endurance missions of Operation Black Buck protecting the Falklands are foremost in the public's imagination, there is no region of the world where the RAF has served continuously for longer or engaged in a more diverse range of operations than the Middle East.

From the Fall of Baghdad in March 1917, when General Maude praised "the ceaseless work of the Royal Flying Corps" for their role in the liberation of Mesopotamia from the Ottomans, through the dark days of the Second World War, countless small wars in the intervening years in support of Britain and her regional allies, to support of Iraqi forces in operations to dislodge Daesh from Mosul in May 2017, the RAF has allowed the UK to stretch Into the Remote Places in a part of the world that never ceased to be unpredictable and volatile.