National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

o L f d e Wi n t e r *
Paesi Bassi
A Century of Military Aviation in the Netherlands,
1911-2011
Man’s age-old desire to be able to fly and to master the airspace was finally
fulfilled at the beginning of the twentieth century. In December 1903, two
American bicycle repairers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, succeeded, for the
first time, in carrying out a controlled and uninterrupted flight in a motorised aircraft
that was “heavier than air”. The flight with the Flyer I, which lasted twelve seconds
and took off from the windy Kill Devil Hills on North Carolina’s eastern seaboard,
heralded the beginning of motorised aviation. After a modest start, aviation soon
picked up speed and branched off into various directions. The aircraft’s potential for
playing a role in warfare was soon recognised in military circles. When World War
I broke out, ten years after the memorable flight by the Wright brothers, virtually all
belligerents had a (provisional) military air force. By the end of the war, the air arm
had undergone a tempestuous development and claimed its position as an inalienable
part of the armed forces. Since then, the battle for air supremacy has formed an
unmistakeable factor in deciding armed conflicts.
The burgeoning aviation sector also made itself felt in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
In the small monarchy, at that time still the motherland of a vast and impressive
colonial empire in Southeast Asia, developments in the field of “aeronautics”
were followed with intense interest by, among others the military. This article focuses
on a century of military aviation in the Netherlands, whereby the history of the
Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) and its immediate predecessors serves as a
guideline. The history of the RNLAF can be roughly divided into three periods:
• the period from 1911 to 1939, in which the modest Dutch air arm gained a permanent
foothold in the armed forces of a (colonial) power which pursued a policy of
armed neutrality;
• the period from 1940 to 1989, in which the Dutch air arm underwent its baptism
of fire in World War II and, following the war, was integrated into the allied defence
effort of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO);
• the period from 1990 to 2011, in which the Royal Netherlands Air Force – as
part of the Dutch armed forces which was being restructured into an expeditionary
force – participated in a wide spectrum of humanitarian missions and crisisresponse
operations.
* Senior researcher for the Netherlands Institute of Military History.