The Royal Air Force’s 14 Squadron was forced to drop the “Crusader” title after an official complaint was filed against the unit.
According to a news report, a single complaint sparked a campaign against the nickname. Aviators and crewmen were told to remove all instances of the name around their hangars.
“We have to take down every mention of Crusaders from our base,” one aviator told the Daily Mail.
“Squadron associations will have to be renamed. It is like we’ve been canceled,” he continued. “Somehow, now, in 2024, ‘Crusaders’ is an offensive term. Previously, nobody was offended.”
There is speculation that the complaint was filed by a disgruntled and seemingly vindictive RAF member.
Regardless of how the complaint originated, the implications are causing an overhaul of the squadron’s identity and a major blow to the unit’s esprit de corps.
“If they’d have asked members of the squadron, rather than dictating this change, almost everyone would have been in favor of retaining ‘Crusaders,’ because it is so much part of our history,” the aviator told the Daily Mail.
Nigel Farage, a British patriot and the “Father of Brexit,” sounded off against the decision, calling it a “woke surrender.”
“So 14 Squadron, the Royal Air Force, involved in two world wars and busy today with intelligence and reconnaissance,” Farage said in a Facebook reel after the decision’s announcement, “their nickname is the Crusaders. But a senior boss in the Royal Air Force has decided that name now has to be dropped because it might cause offense to Muslims.
“I wonder whether in Saudi Arabia they’re bending to our culture and our way of life,” Farage continued. “I wonder even more deeply why we are literally giving in on virtually everything.”The 14 Squadron Association’s history of the unit shows it was involved in much more than World Wars I and II.
It lists the unit’s creation date as late 1914 to strengthen the RAF. Due to shortages in trained pilots, aircraft and gear, the new force was assembled with both experienced and half-trained aviators.
The squadron fought over Egypt and Sinai, and even contributed in Arabia to help the efforts of Col. Thomas Lawrence (more famously known as Lawrence of Arabia) and his Arab rebels.
The unit continued to fight until the Ottoman Empire’s 1918 capitulation.
In remembrance of the men’s desperate fight in the Middle East, the unit was given the nickname of “Crusaders,” along with a winged crusader badge applied to the squadron’s aircraft.
In World War II, the unit reprised its role as a desert combat unit by squaring off against Axis forces across North Africa and Abyssinia. The squadron also assisted in the Mediterranean theater as Allied forces invaded fascist Italy.
The 14 Squadron’s warfighting capabilities were also seen in 1999’s Kosovo War, where aviators flew sorties against the Serbs and their military infrastructure. In later years, the unit would also assist during the United Kingdom’s military operation in Iraq.
In 2011, the original squadron was disbanded, with its numberplate and symbols being inherited by a newly formed intelligence and reconnaissance unit.
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