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The Royal Air Force Regiment (RAF Regt) is part of the Royal Air Force and functions as a specialist airfield defence corps founded by Royal Warrant in 1942. The RAF Regiment is trained in CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) defence and equipped with advanced vehicles and detection measures. RAF Regiment instructors are responsible for training all Royal Air Force personnel in basic Force Protection, such as first aid, weapon handling, and CBRN skills. The regiment and its members are known within the RAF as 'The Regiment', 'Rock Apes' or 'Rocks'. After a 32-week trainee gunner course, its members are trained and equipped to prevent a successful enemy attack in the first instance; minimise the damage caused by a successful attack; and ensure that air operations can continue without delay in the aftermath of an attack. RAF Regiment squadrons use aggressive defence tactics whereby they actively seek out infiltrators in a large area surrounding airfields. ==History== (詳細はNo. 1 Armoured Car Company RAF in 1921 for operations in Iraq, followed shortly afterwards by No. 2 Armoured Car Company RAF and No. 3 Armoured Car Company RAF. These were equipped with Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars and were highly successful in ground combat operations throughout the Middle East in the 1920s and 1930s. The RAF Regiment came into existence, in name, on 5 February 1942. From the start it had both field squadrons and light anti-aircraft squadrons, the latter originally armed with Hispano 20mm cannon and then the Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft gun. Its role was to seize, secure and defend airfields to enable air operations to take place. Several parachute squadrons were formed to assist in the seizing of airfields and No. II Squadron retains this capability. 284 Field Squadron was the first RAF unit to arrive in West Berlin in 1945, to secure RAF Gatow. During the Second World War, with its first headquarters established at RAF Alma Park, Grantham, Lincolnshire and its first depot at nearby RAF Belton Park the RAF Regiment grew to a force of over 80,000 men in 280 squadrons of 185 men each (each squadron including five officers). Squadrons usually consisted of a Headquarters Flight, three Rifle Flights, an Air-Defence Flight, and an Armoured-Car Flight. The flights were grouped together into wings as needed. It also operated six Armoured Car Squadrons to provide an area response capability to several RAF stations. In late June 1944, with the British Army fighting in Normandy where they were sustaining heavy losses and at the same time suffering from a severe shortage of manpower and therefore desperate for more men, it was decided to transfer 25,000 officers and men of the RAF Regiment to the Army, mostly to the infantry and the Foot Guards, to be retrained. They proved to be of exceptionally high quality. The Second World War campaign in eastern India and northern Burma was fought in jungle and mountains with few or non-existent roads and which facilitated the infiltration of enemy patrols behind front lines. This was overcome by holding defensive "boxes" mainly or entirely supplied by air. The defence of forward airfields close to the main army concentrations was vital to this strategy. A training school and depot for the Regiment was established at Secunderabad in October 1942 to retrain former ground defence airmen. It had an assault course considered tougher than anything the army had in India. Six field squadrons and seventy AA flights were initially formed containing 160 officers and 4,000 other ranks.〔Warwick pp.10-21〕 Until mid-1944 the AA flights were equipped only with light machine guns, then with Hispano 20 mm cannon for the rest of the war. Regiment units defended airfields and forward mobile radar units in Arakan in the allied offensive in late 1942 and early 1943.〔Warwick p. 29-33〕 During the Battle of Imphal all supplies and reinforcements had to be flown in between 29 March and 22 June 1944 with Regiment units providing vital airfield defence.〔Warwick p. 47〕 Following the failure of the Japanese Operation U-Go it was decided to pursue the shattered remnants of the Japanese 15th Army into Burma during the monsoon, in average rainfall of ten inches per day, and rifle flights were sometimes attached to advancing Indian Army and British East African units to gain experience in the jungle.〔Warwick p. 93-103〕 Units of 1307 Wing were flown into the newly captured and strategically vital Meiktila airfield on 1 March 1945. Only a roughly nine hundred metre square box, shared with the army and some United States anti-aircraft artillery, could be held at night and the airfield had to be cleared of enemy each morning before flying could start. As one of the Regiment's proudest battle honours this three week battle destroyed the Japanese hold on northern Burma.〔Warwick p. 158-180〕 King George VI became Air Commodore-in-Chief of the Regiment in 1947. He later decided to present his King's Colour in 1952, on the 10th anniversary of the Regiment's founding. The King, however, died around this time and Queen Elizabeth instead presented the Queen's Colour a year later. In 1974, the Rapier surface-to-air missile system entered service with the RAF Regiment, and equipped four squadrons protecting four airfields in RAF Germany. Light Armoured Squadrons, equipped with FV101 Scorpion and FV107 Scimitar light Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance (Tracked) - (CVR(T) - continued to be operated into the 1980s. Also from the 1980s there were 3 Squadrons (19,20 and 66) who were also equipped with Rapier and defended the USAF Airbases of RAF Upper Heyford, RAF Fairford, RAF Mildenhall, RAF Bentwaters, and RAF Woodbridge. These units were disbanded at the end of the Cold War. Formerly the RAF's firefighters were also members of the RAF Regiment, although they are now independent of it. In July 2004 it was announced that the role of providing Ground Based Air Defence was to be transferred to the British Army's Royal Artillery and the four Royal Air Force Regiment air defence squadrons (15 Sqn; 16 Sqn; 26 Sqn and 37 Sqn) were to be disbanded. The Regiment has a museum at RAF Honington near Bury St Edmunds. The RAF Regiment mounts annually the King's Guard/Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace, St James's Palace, Windsor Castle and the Tower of London, with the first occasion being on 1 April 1943. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「RAF Regiment」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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