The battles along the Western Front in the First World War

are impossible to understand without reference to the war in the air,

the battle above those trench lines of France and Flanders.

What was the history of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force in World War I?

In episode four of the classic comedy series Blackadder goes forth, Captain Blackadder decides to join the Royal Flying Corps, which he has heard is called the 20 Ministers.

Thinking this relates to the average amount of work they do each day,

compared to what he as an infantry soldier in the trenches does,

this sounds like a cushy number.

But he quickly discovers, instead from Lord Flashard,

that the phrase relates to their projected life expectancy, much to his and Lieutenant George's horror.

Now, Blackadder isn't a documentary, of course, it's comedy.

But being good observational comedy, and for many, a segue to an interest in the Great War,

it highlighted an aspect of the conflict which is easy to forget the war above the battlefield.

John Giles, who was the founder of the Western Front Association, always said when we look at the history of the Great War,

we look what happened on the battlefield, often what happened beneath the

battlefield with those tunneling operations that were so widespread, but it's just as important to look

up above the battlefield. And that's what we're going to do in this upcoming series. So with this

episode, we begin this special series, War in the Air Month,

beginning here with an overview of the raw flying corps and the RAF in the Great War

and hopefully learn the true story of the 20 Ministers. Now there's a lot we won't have space to cover in just one episode as an overview of this

from other theatres of war where the flying services were operating

through to the balloonatics.

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