On 10 July 2018, London looked up. From Green Park, beside Buckingham Palace, successive formations crossed the grey summer sky in a centenary display marking 100 years of the Royal Air Force.

Waiting in Green Park

The film begins at street level, with people arriving through Green Park and taking up positions close to Buckingham Palace. There was no grandstand view here: this was London watching from the grass, scanning the skyline and listening for the first approaching engines.

The date was chosen carefully. The Royal Air Force had been formed on 1 April 1918, and the London celebrations came 100 days after its official centenary. A service at Westminster Abbey was followed by a parade along The Mall before the flypast began over Buckingham Palace at 1pm.

A century represented in the sky

The scale was unusual even by ceremonial London standards. Around 100 aircraft, representing 23 types, took part. Nearly 200 aircrew from 25 squadrons and 14 RAF stations were involved, supported by two civilian airfields. More than 70,000 spectators were reported along The Mall.

From the ground, the order of the aircraft mattered less than the cumulative effect. Helicopters arrived first, followed by formations that connected different eras of RAF service. Larger aircraft appeared slowly against the cloud, while faster groups announced themselves with a sharper sound and were gone almost as soon as they came into view.

The public view of RAF100

This Roberts London recording is not an identification guide to every aircraft. Its value lies in preserving the public experience: the waiting, the changing engine notes, the difficulty of following a formation through cloud and trees, and the reaction as another group emerged above the palace.

The succession of aircraft made the centenary tangible. Rather than reducing 100 years to a static exhibition, the flypast placed the RAF’s history and present-day capability over one of London’s most recognisable ceremonial settings.

The Red Arrows finale

The Red Arrows supplied the unmistakable conclusion, crossing central London with red, white and blue smoke. Their arrival gave the crowd the visual finale it had been waiting for and closed a sequence that had stretched from helicopters and transport aircraft to fast jets and large formations.

Afterwards, the crowd moved back through Green Park and around Buckingham Palace. What remained was a distinctly London memory: a major national anniversary experienced collectively, outdoors, by simply stopping and looking up.

RAF100 in the London archive

The 2018 centenary programme was designed to connect the RAF’s past with the service operating at the time. In central London, that purpose was expressed through ceremony as well as flight: the Westminster Abbey service, personnel parading along The Mall, the Royal Family appearing on the Buckingham Palace balcony and the aircraft following overhead.

Seen years later, the film also records how people experienced a large civic event before the route had disappeared from view. Phones and cameras rise as the sound approaches; conversations stop; then the crowd relaxes between formations. Those ordinary reactions give scale to an anniversary that official numbers alone cannot convey.