Not surprising, the first term you hear about anything sticks with you. I’ll bet he used to call refrigerators “iceboxes” as well!
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Mum called it the Royal Air Force. 
David
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I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that P-47 and P-51 were taken for restoration projects. There’s more WW2 fighters flying now than at any time since 1945!
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Ah, the F-86D!
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If I recall correctly they were little more than shells on poles. There was another one at the other end of the building. It may have been a spitfire.
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Ah yes, one of those straight-wing early jets that were featured in so many 1950s Sci-Fi and monster movies we love so much! 
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No doubt, it was the Royal Air Force since early 1918 when it was formed by amalgamating the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. Your mother most likely had never known it by another name.
The RNAS flyers were NOT too happy about that “forced marriage” but that’s another story.
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Hence the smiley. 
David
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The one that always confused me is R.A.A.F. 
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The other side of the globe.
The Royal Australian Air Force.
An aside. When my mother flew aircraft to U.K. bases the aircraft were not armed. Seeing any enemy aircraft meant hurrying away and not get shot down.
Sorry I am deviating from the thread
David
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I still use icebox sometimes.
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Quite a few women flew as ferry pilots during the war. Many of the aircraft that made the flight from the US to Europe were flown by women. The ferry pilots were used to the weather and route, so they had a much better success record than the trained combat pilots on the ferry runs.
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Your mother was a ferry pilot David? Outstanding for her! 
When my brother was attending the Air Force Academy he knew a fellow cadet who’s father was Army Air Force, then US Air Force, and his mother was a ferry pilot, a WASP. Talk about a marriage made in heaven!
Or IN the heavens. Or something.
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So did my father, ALL the time!
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Oh, so in the article RAAF is Roswell Army Air Field! The Royal Australian Air Force could have sued them for copyright infringement! 
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he actually did now that you say that i do remember him calling it an icebox lol we used to have some old school stuff too old projectors with reels,
slideshow carosel machienes,
a rotary dial buisness landline,
AOL dial up for a while,
WIN98 desktop,
tons of pictures of b26’s especially in grandpas bedroom.
a foot pedal sowing machine,
yeah we had some oldschool stuff including cast iron hand meat grinders and for some reason even though we never used it a butchers cutting wheel.
plus countless emepty mason jars and accompanying lids
i even remember grandpas old radio and bought one still got it that looks just like grandpa’s its called a chromomatic 272
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Here’s an F4F Grumman Wildcat equipped with drop tanks and heading out fr a long day of fighter escort.
This is another early war scheme but some months later. She’s flying off USS Wasp in the Fall of '42.
The Wildcat was not as fast or agile as the Japanese Zero, but it was tough as nails–hence the nickname “Grumman Iron Works” for the company that designed them. In the hands of Jimmy Thach or Butch O’Hare (yes, THAT Butch O’Hare), the wildcat was a first-class aircraft. First* of the famous line of Grumman cats, the Wildcat held its own in the PTO and, under lend-lease as the Martlet, provided Britain with its first decent carrier-borne fighter in the Atlantic and Med (why this was so is a long, sad story of internecine warfare among Britain’s armed services between the World Wars).
*The Last of the Grumman cats was the fabled–and too soon discarded–F14 Tomcat, probably the greatest air-superiority interceptor ever flown, especially when mated with the AIM-54C Phoenix.
As the days go own, we’ll see what this fellow is escorting.
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Don’t you mean ‘Thach’?
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