Remembrance Day - The King acknowledges a debt owed at the end of the Great War

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kings message.jpgToday is Remembrance Day in the UK, a day traditionally set aside to consider those who served and died in the Armed Services fighting to protect their country.

Nowhere is this debt to these men and women better illustrated than the Flight historic archives.

Remembrance Day is on the closest Sunday to 11th November - the day the Great War ended 90 years ago back in 1918.

The front cover of Flight magazine from 14th November 1918 consists solely of a moving and heartfelt message from King George V to the Royal Air Force thanking them fore their contribution to the victory.

At the time Flight itself was playing a vital role in recording and reporting on the ground-breaking way of waging war that was aerial combat. Elsewhere in that issue Sir Auckland Geddes, Minister of National Services is quoted as saying "Newspapers are an essential part of our war organisation".

This is followed by a Comment piece from the Editor and Founder Stanley Spooner, and although our thoughts of that day are instinctively filled with sadness and pride, his emotions upon hearing the news that peace has come are more upbeat with the taste of victory:

remembrance text.jpgOf course Remembrance Day reflects more than just the achievements of the service men and women of the First World War.

Elsewhere in the Archives there are moving and emotional pieces focussing on losses and victories from World War II and other armed conflicts.

From all of those entries, articles and features the victory edition of Flight from May 1945 is one of obvious significance. In it one simple but stark set of figures jumped out at me from a table totalling the numbers of lost aircraft.


toll of aircraft in WWII.jpg

As always a minute's silence will be held today at 11:11am

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