Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
In our latest Crate Escape video we are focussing on a pioneering woman who strengthened the RAF through her devotion and service - Jean Lennox Bird who made history as the first female pilot to be awarded RAF wings.
Jean first learned to fly as a private pilot in the 1930s. During the Second World War she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and later the Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying aircraft such as Spitfires, Hurricanes, Wellingtons and Dakotas across Britain.
By 1952 she had logged over 3,000 flying hours on 90 different aircraft types. Her achievement paved the way for future generations of women in RAF aviation.
In this short film Midlands Curator Ewen Cameron shows us her uniform, which is currently preserved at the Museum's RAF Stafford stores. This is one of over 50,000 items that is currently in this store.
By sponsoring a box you can change this. You’ll play a vital role in moving, protecting and sharing these priceless artefacts in our new Midlands Collections Hub opening summer 2027.
Be part of this landmark moment. Donate today and help unlock these incredible RAF stories for future generations: rafmuseum.org.uk/crate-escape
In our latest Crate Escape video we are focussing on a pioneering woman who strengthened the RAF through her devotion and service - Jean Lennox Bird who made history as the first female pilot to be awarded RAF wings.
Jean first learned to fly as a private pilot in the 1930s. During the Second World War she joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and later the Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying aircraft such as Spitfires, Hurricanes, Wellingtons and Dakotas across Britain.
By 1952 she had logged over 3,000 flying hours on 90 different aircraft types. Her achievement paved the way for future generations of women in RAF aviation.
In this short film Midlands Curator Ewen Cameron shows us her uniform, which is currently preserved at the Museum's RAF Stafford stores. This is one of over 50,000 items that is currently in this store.
By sponsoring a box you can change this. You’ll play a vital role in moving, protecting and sharing these priceless artefacts in our new Midlands Collections Hub opening summer 2027.
Be part of this landmark moment. Donate today and help unlock these incredible RAF stories for future generations: rafmuseum.org.uk/crate-escape

![The End of Gentlemanly Warfare Great Britain’s Evolving Arguments for Strategic Bombing 1930 - 1945
In this lecture Katie Brown analyses the rhetoric employed in British arguments for and against strategic bombing.
This free Trenchard lecture is supported by the Royal Aeronautical Society and is part of the RAF Museums Research Lecture Programme. You can find out more about the RAeS at http://www.aerosociety.com/
If you would like to support the RAF Museum, you can make a donation at: https://support.rafmuseum.org/Donate-Now
TALK OUTLINE
In a 1932 House of Commons debate, the Lord President of the Council Stanley Baldwin uttered his now infamous warning that “the bomber will always get through.”
More notably, he went on to argue that “[t]he only defence is an offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.”
Baldwin’s statements, while originating as a call for disarmament, quickly became a rallying cry for both the “militarists” in Great Britain—individuals who supported the continued supply of British defences—and the “pacifists”—those who fought for aerial restrictions and the outlawry of war.
Why then was it so important for Baldwin, and those who would later parrot his phrasing, to focus specifically on the murdering of women and children to justify disarmament?
Traditionally, British society had gendered pacifism and calls for disarmament as feminine. Yet, Baldwin was a prominent male politician evoking a standard masculine, patriarchal martial ideal of protecting the state and the weaker women and children as justification for pacifist ideology.
While militarists in the interwar years also commonly evoked the chivalric tenant to justify war, it became increasingly common for pacifists, both male and female, to call for the end of global war in order to protect women and children.
What then accounted for the change in the pacifist argument, this masculinization of peace? Did Britons’ concern for “the fairer sex” reach to other, non-British nations?
This paper applies a gendered lens to analyse and deconstruct the rhetoric surrounding the disputes, and in turn provides a nuanced interpretation of British arguments for and against strategic bombing to answer these questions.
This lecture was first broadcast in 2021 The End of Gentlemanly Warfare Great Britain’s Evolving Arguments for Strategic Bombing 1930 - 1945](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XqqZTLbYN3E/mqdefault.jpg)








