Britain: An official handbook > 1959

I22 Britain: an official handbook
Auxiliary and Reserve Forces . , ,
The Royal Auxiliary Air Force consists of fighter control units raised and
maintained by Territorial and Auxiliary Forces Associations.
The Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, which is part of the Royal Air Force
Reserve provides a pool of officers, airmen and airwomen mainly with previous
Air Force service, who, like the personnel of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, train
on a part-time basis. It includes members of the university air squadrons.
Part-W National Service men serve in Class H of the Royal Air Force Reserve
or they may volunteer to join the Volunteer Reserve or the Royal Auxiliary Air
Force.
mS’Td women from all walks of life form the Royal Observer
Corps a predominantly voluntary civilian organisation, administered by Fighte
Command and devoted to the specialised tasks of identifying and reporting i
movements of aircraft, and of measuring and reporting on radioactivity m the event
of nuc-lear attack The Corps originated in the first world war to report the move¬
ments of German aircraft and zeppelins over Britain and was officially established
in 1925-
Air Training: Corps .
The Air Training Corps provides pre-Service training for boys between the ages
ofT4 and 18 years. Like the other pre-Service formations, it seeks to inculcate
citizenship as well as training for the RAF.
HOME DEFENCE
The experience of the second world war showed the importance of having
trained and organised bodies of men and women ready “ C,948
enemv air attacks on the civil population; and the Civil Defence Act, 194
recognised that a permanent system of civil defence was essential to national
Taffitv The development of nuclear weapons, while it has greatly intensified the
problems of civil defence and has called for much replanmng which is ” Pr°ce“'
has not lessened the need for an efficient civil defence organisation. C vil defence
in the words of the 1958 White Paper on Defence, ‘remains an integral part o
d1nnffiePevent of nuclear attack, the problems of rescue, fire-fighting and welfare
operatitmiTv/ould be greatly intensified by the presence of ^ cdl
wPould have to be detected and its extent and intensity measured The first call
14 have to be met by the civilian services on the spot, and these would
Sported by *he a^edforces in the country a. the time, whether regular or
reserve which were not immediately required for combat operations. The
of Drfence is charged with planning the part which the armed forces would play m
hoSe defence! and with co-ordinating the plans of the military authorities with
,hThe° c“ economic3 capacity limits the effort which can be devoted ,0
home defence preparations; and the main defence objective must be to maintai
ffiTnudear Sterrent, i.e. not to prepare for war but to prevent it. In home defence
ffie main task in peace time is to keep a local organisation in being as a
for expansion if necessary, to provide training equipment and to Ptoeeed with
essential research. The Government has declared its conviction that, if the de
were to foil, countless lives could be saved by civil defence preparations made in
advance.