The Women Behind the Few: The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in British Air Intelligence During the Second World War

“The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it”.1  Speaking to the Cabinet in 1940, Winston Churchill shared his conviction that the Royal Air Force would be of critical importance to any hope of Allied victory in the Second World War. This research seeks to demonstrate how he was correct, not by studying Fighter or Bomber Command as many others have, but by examining the way in which the RAF relied upon various forms of intelligence to make informed operational decisions. The research focuses specifically on the contributions to communications and intelligence made to the Royal Air Force by members of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. In doing so, it reframes women’s military contributions to this war within the larger development of modern twentieth century warfare, specifically the centrality of information and communication systems to success on the battlefield. In addition to evaluating the exact nature and effects of their contributions, this thesis aims to examine their intelligence work in relation to the development of the modern ‘kill-chain’, and in doing so, to re-evaluate the ‘combat taboo’, a major concern in the topic of women’s military history. The paper examines what women did – ranging from their work in radar and in the RAF’s integrated air defence system to their contributions at Bletchley Park and in Bomber Command, and places their work in a larger conceptual context. 


The paper draws heavily upon the official records of the Air Ministry, the RAF and the WAAF, all held by the National Archives at Kew. To corroborate and build upon the historical picture preserved by official records, recorded oral testimony was utilised, as held by the Imperial War Museum, the International Bomber Command Centre, the Bawdsey Radar Trust and the Association of Fighter Controllers. Diaries were referred to, as well as personal papers and collections held by the families of some of the WAAF involved in intelligence work. The types of sources that were needed to conduct this research reveal the challenges involved in researching people – but especially women – in the world of intelligence and espionage. These challenges have resulted in a distorted view and general misconceptions of the roles and importance of women in the military services before, during and after the Second World War. This in-depth examination of the WAAF in air intelligence and communications reconceptualises their war work, and in both its process and in its findings, it urges a re-evaluation of their significance in the air war and in the wider Allied victory in 1945. 

This paper began its life as an academic (MPhil) thesis in 2018. It was then published as a book, The Women Behind the Few, in March 2023, and has since been added to university reading lists for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on intelligence and war studies.  

1:   Memorandum to the Cabinet by Winston Churchill, 3rd September 1940, in Winston Churchill, TheSecond World War, 6 vols (London: Cassell & Co. Ltd., 1948-1954), II (1949), pp. 405-6.

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