During the Second World War, it at first ferried aircraft from factories to operational units and performed air transport.

[citation needed] Transport Command was the only RAF command in to which aircrew originating in the Caribbean were not posted due to the fact that they might be required to fly to the United States where racial discrimination was legally entrenched at the time.

45 Group RAF - HQ at Dorval in Canada,[2] (the former Atlantic Ferry Organization) No.

[10] Operating as it did under wartime conditions, Transport Command had a relatively high accident rate.

Prominent accidents included a July 1943 crash at Gibraltar, killing the Polish leader General Sikorski and several other senior figures in the exile government; a February 1945 crash in the Mediterranean, killing eleven members of the British delegation to the Yalta Conference; and a March 1945 disappearance over the North Atlantic involving the aircraft formerly used as a private transport by Winston Churchill.

Following these and other losses, in April 1945, concerns were raised in Parliament about the experience of crews and the maintenance of aircraft within Transport Command.

One frequent issue reported was that VIP passengers were said to put pressure on crews to fly in difficult conditions; the Air Ministry reported that it had tried to put in place orders to prevent this.

[14] The Command took part in several big operations, including the Berlin Airlift in 1948, which reinforced the need for a large RAF transport fleet.

In 1956, new aircraft designs became available, including the de Havilland Comet (the first operational jet transport), and the Blackburn Beverley.

During the 1960s the command was divided into three different forces: During the 1950s and 1960s Transport Command evacuated military personnel from the Suez Canal Zone prior and after the Suez Crisis of October–November 1956;[16] evacuated casualties from South Korea during the Korean War and from the Malaya during the Malayan Emergency; moved essential supplies to Woomera, South Australia, and ferried personnel and supplies out to Christmas Island for the UK's atomic bomb tests.

In addition, Transport Command ran scheduled routes to military staging posts and bases in the Indian Ocean region, Southeast Asia and the Far East, to maintain contact between the UK and military bases of strategic importance.

It also carried out special flights worldwide covering all the continents bar Antarctica.

[citation needed] The 1960s saw a reduction of the RAF and a loss of independence of the former functional commands.

The Sabres were flown via Keflavik (Iceland) on to Shetland and from there to mainland Scotland.

47 Group at The Hall, Milton Ernest, Bedfordshire within Transport Command.