Vintage Poster Archives
Join the Royal Air Force 1918 | WW1 Recruitment Poster
Join the Royal Air Force 1918 | WW1 Recruitment Poster
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An RAF biplane, roundels visible on both wings, dives onto a German aircraft marked with the Iron Cross. The German engine is already burning, smoke and flame erupting from the cowling, the pilot visible in the open cockpit. A teal, cloud-scattered sky stretches behind them, with silhouetted aircraft in the middle distance and English countryside fields below. The headline reads, in red letters with yellow outline: JOIN THE ROYAL AIR FORCE. A gold scrolled cartouche at the base sets out rates of pay from 1s 6d to 12 shillings per day, for recruits aged 18 to 50.
This lithograph was produced in 1918, the founding year of the Royal Air Force. The RAF came into being on 1 April 1918, formed from the merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. It was the world's first independent air service, and this poster was among the earliest recruitment materials to carry the new organisation's name. The artist is unidentified; the design is held in the Imperial War Museums collection (object 8851). The aerial action depicted was not simply illustration: it was a visual argument to a generation of young men for whom the fighter pilot had become a figure of public fascination.
The composition is characteristic of British wartime lithography of the period: bold display type at the head, a central illustrative panel making the recruitment case through action rather than instruction, and a formal cartouche at the foot borrowing the authority of a legal or commercial document for the rates-of-pay detail. The graphic language of the dogfight, the burning enemy, the triumphant RAF aircraft, was a deliberate contrast with the static imagery of earlier army recruitment posters.
Reproduced as a fine art print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper with pigment-based archival inks. Of particular interest to those drawn to WW1 aviation history, the early years of the RAF, and the graphic design of British wartime communication.
