BRITISH WWI WOMAN’S ROYAL AIR FORCE TUNIC.

An exceptionally rare garment being a transitional tunic of the pattern worn by the Woman’s Auxiliary Army Corps, however slightly modified for wear by a member of the early Woman’s Royal Air Force. The uniform is of fine quality ribbed khaki wool, which is typical of officers tunics, the tunic itself had been commissioned by another rank of the Woman’s Royal Air Force, female other ranks generally did purchase their own uniforms, there is a tailor’s label to the rear of the tunic with the address of ‘Blandford, Dorset’ which has been a long time garrison area and was a posting for T.E.Lawrence when he served in the early Royal Air Force after service in the Middle East. Any Royal Air Force khaki garment is considered scarce especially to find a female item of this type. Some interesting Royal Air Force regulations have been applied. There has never been collar badges fitted to the tunic and the belt is the single pronged version that is regulation only for Royal Air Force garments, generally there would have been button belt with this garment, however the tailoring stipulations would have varied greatly as there were no clear regulations to the exact detail of these uniforms at that early stage. All buttons throughout are the roped edge gilt Royal Air Force type, there are two buttons to each cuff, one of these cuff buttons is unfortunately missing, the rest of the buttons are all intact throughout. The condition is extremely good, to each upper arm are the red flying albatross badges, these are silk embroidered onto a woollen background and the heads face forward. There is much excellent information about Woman’s Royal Air Force uniforms in the book British Air Forces 1914-18 volume 2 by the McCormack Brothers by Osprey Publishing.

Code: 86755