No. 14 Squadron

No. 14 Squadron was formed on 3 February 1915 at Shoreham as part of the Royal Flying Corps, and spent much of its inter-war existence in the Middle East, particularly Palestine and Transjordan — a posting reflected in its motto, drawn from the Quran at the suggestion of the Emir of Transjordan: “I spread my wings and keep my promise.” At the outbreak of the Second World War the squadron was already based in the region, and moved to Port Sudan in May 1940 to face the Italian forces massing in East Africa. Flying Vickers Wellesleys, it opened its wartime account on the night of 11–12 June 1940, bombing fuel storage and the airfield at Massawa in Eritrea, and went on to range widely over Eritrea and Ethiopia. The squadron subsequently re-equipped with Bristol Blenheim IVs and then Martin Marauders — becoming the first RAF squadron to fly the American type operationally — conducting bombing and anti-shipping strikes across the Western Desert, North Africa and the central Mediterranean. From March 1943 it turned to anti-submarine patrol work out of Algeria and later Sardinia before transferring to RAF Chivenor in October 1944, where it flew Wellington XIVs over the Western Approaches and Bay of Biscay until disbanding on 1 June 1945.