The Birth of the RCAF

All Fools Day. It must have struck some airmen as a strange day to launch a brave new organization. Till the end of time they and their successors would celebrate 1 April 1924 as the birthdate of the Royal Canadian Air Force. And yet they had all already been through so much together. It was a new beginning, but in many respects simply a continuation of what they had started so long ago. But then again not really so long. Less than a decade earlier the world was at peace, few could have predicted or imagined the Great War, only the wildest visionary foresaw any useful role for the aeroplane, man's newest toy, and the key figures who would eventually play important roles in the development of the RCAF were little more than children. Now, on this day in particular, the birthday of a new military service, the motto chosen, borrowed from the parent Royal Air Force in Mother Britain, seemed particularly appropriate: Per Ardua Ad Astra, 'Through Adversity To The Stars.'(1)

It must have struck the members of the new RCAF as so true; they had indeed been through much adversity, most obviously over the battlefields of the 'war to end all wars' and, more recently, in the bureaucratic and political backrooms of Ottawa.

If thoughts of this nature passed through the minds of the young veterans of the newly created RCAF, they must have also gained confidence from the familiar flag raised wherever they established a presence. The RAF had graciously permitted the Dominion to employ its light-blue ensign, with the Union Jack in the upper corner by the flagstaff and the roundel on the fly.(2)

Thousands of Canadian airmen had been serving in the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service when they were joined to form the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. It had to be a good sign. The flag, the motto, the name, and even the date foretold a rosy future for the newest of Canada's armed forces. Little could they imagine the adversities that awaited them, of just how appropriate the choice of motto would prove to be - for the future as well as the past.

The ceremonial raising of the RAF ensign and the promulgation of King's Regulations and Orders for the Royal Canadian Air Force(3) marked the culmination of a circuitous journey and a difficult struggle for Canadian airmen, many of whom did not live to see the birth of one of their most cherished goals, an independent air force in Canada. In fact, however, the new beginning was not as sudden or as new as appearances suggest. The date, 1 April 1924, received official designation as the birthdate of the RCAF because it coincided with the start of the Government of Canada's fiscal year and was felt to give air force personnel 'reasonable notice.' Members would officially count their service from that date. However, for the men involved - and there would only be men for several years - nothing much had changed.

The Canadian Air Force itself had been authorized by order-in- council on 18 February 1920, albeit as a non-permanent, non- professional force under the administration of the Air Board,(4) and the RAF ensign had been flying over CAF establishments for almost three years. They had raised it for the first time during a solemn ceremony at Camp Borden on 30 November 1921.(5) The RAF's Latin motto had been adopted by the Canadian Air Force on 23 April 1923,(6) the King had approved the use of the 'Royal' prefix on 15 February 1923,(7) and, in fact, CAF Weekly Routine Orders had included the heading 'Royal Canadian Air Force' since January 1924.(8)

It is doubtful, therefore, that the original members of the RCAF looked upon the April 1924 date as any more significant than some other milestones on the road to their service's birth. It had, in fact, not suddenly been born but rather had evolved over a period of time. If there was any noticeable emotion it may well have been relief - relief that it had finally happened.

References:

(1) Chaz Bowyer writes that the RAF motto, which had been 'regally approved on March 15, 1913, and promulgated in Army Order No. 3 in the following April, had no official translation. It had been the motto of the Irish family of Mulvany for hundreds of years, and was quoted in Sir Henry Rider Haggard's book, The People of the Mist. This last reference was remembered by Lieutenant-Colonel J.S. Yule, RE (later, Colonel, OBE) as he strolled across Laffan's Plain, Farnborough with Lieutenant J.N. Fletcher, RE (later, Wing Commander, AFC) one evening in May 1912. The two subalterns were discussing their commanding officer's ([Lieutenant-Colonel, later Major-General Frederick H.] Sykes') suggestion that the newly-created RFC needed an official motto, when Yule recalled the passage in Haggard's novel. Its literal translation has never been accurately established, even today, but the Mulvany family had always understood the motto to mean "Through Difficulties to the Skies"; while Rider Haggard's personal translation had been "Through Struggle to the Stars". Untranslatable, with no known origin, it was nevertheless the proud motto with which Britain's pioneer air servicemen prepared for their part in the world's first aerial conflict. That the spirit of the motto was thoroughly understood by each airmen [sic] is witnessed by the traditions of courage and devotion to duty established during the years 1914-18, which were to be proudly inherited and superbly embellished by the successors of the tiny group of airmen assembled at Amiens in August 1914.' Chaz Bowyer, History of the RAF (London 1977), 19

(2) More precisely, 'The heraldic description was light blue, in the dexter canton the Union, and, in the centre of the fly of the flag, three roundels superimposed red upon white upon blue. This section is based upon AFHQ file 601-4B-8, volume 1.' F.H. Hitchins, Air Board, Canadian Air Force, and Royal Canadian Air Force, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Canadian War Museum Paper No. 2 (Ottawa 1972), 27n33.

(3) See order-in-council PC 353 of 4 March 1924, superseding PC 76 of 15 Jan. 1924. For the first KR & O, see the supplement to The Canada Gazette of 15 March 1924, 1-108. Hitchins, Air Board, 116.

(4) H.A. Halliday, Chronology of Canadian Military Aviation, National Museum of Man, Mercury Series, Canadian War Museum Paper No. 6 (Ottawa 1975), 8; Hitchins, Air Board, 8

(5) Hitchins, Air Board, 27-9. For pictorial evidence of this event, see the photograph in W.A.B. Douglas, The Creation of a National Air Force, The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, vol. II (Ottawa and Toronto 1986), 5.

(6) Halliday, Chronology, 13

(7) Halliday, Chronology, 13

(8) See the collection of RCAF Weekly Routine Orders at the Department of National Defence's Directorate of History and Heritage (DHH) in Ottawa (uncatalogued in the library). This invaluable source does not include Daily Routine Orders, or DROs, from individual units. Some of these have survived at the Personnel Records Centre of the National Archives of Canada (NA).

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