SERVING and past members of the RAF’s ground fighting force descended on a museum near York to celebrate its 67th anniversary.

The RAF Regiment, which was founded in North Yorkshire on February 1, 1942, deploys officers and gunners to provide protection to the force’s aircraft.

It has recently come under the spotlight in a new TV documentary called Warzone, which is being screened every Monday on Channel 5.

The programme – which takes a look at UK military operations in Afghanistan – has, in turn, sparked interest in England’s only exhibition of the RAF Regiment at the Yorkshire Air Museum in Elvington.

This week, members of the 609 (West Riding) Royal Auxiliary Air Force Squadron, based at RAF Leeming, visited the museum following their recent tour of duty in Afghanistan.

They met up with Frank Wright, a museum volunteer who served with the RAF Regiment from 1952 to 1956, to celebrate 67 years since the regiment was founded at Butlin’s Holiday Camp, in Filey.

Shortly after building work for the holiday camp started, the Second World War broke out and it was taken over by the RAF Regiment and became known as RAF Hunmanby Moor until after the war ended Museum director Ian Reed said: “It is appropriate that the Yorkshire Air Museum houses this fascinating display, containing some unique memorabilia, on the history and development of the force – not far from its spiritual home.”

The exhibition is open every day and includes a Japanese flag presented to the RAF Regiment in Singapore when they took the Japanese surrender in 1945.

The regiment served the RAF during the Second World War, seeing active service in North Africa, Middle and Far East, the Mediterranean, Italy and central Europe.

Today, members continue to be deployed all over the world to wherever there are airfields, installations or other elements of the RAF to defend.

• Anybody with photos of the Filey camp when it was used by the RAF Regiment, are asked to phone Ian Richardson, at the air musuem, on 01904 608718.