During WWII the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment, which had moved from Felixstowe to a safer location at Helensburgh in Scotland, was under the control of the RAE.

Engineers at the Royal Aircraft Establishment invented high strength carbon fibre in 1963.

Then, on 1 April 1995 the DRA and other MOD organisations merged to form the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA).

In 2001 DERA was part-privatised by the MOD, resulting in two separate organisations, the state-owned Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), and the privatised company QinetiQ.

Some orders were met by the factory itself, but the bulk of production was by private British companies, some of which had not previously built aircraft.

As if this wasn't enough, there is the F.E.2c; this was a generic description rather than a subtype proper, and refers to several one-off conversions of F.E.2b's that experimentally reversed the seating positions of the pilot and the observer.

The B.E.1 was basically the prototype for the early B.E.2 but the B.E.2c was almost a completely new aeroplane, with very little common with the earlier B.E.2 types apart from engine and fuselage.

On the other hand, the B.E.3 to the B.E.7 were all effectively working prototypes for the B.E.8 and were all very similar in design, with progressive minor modifications of the kind that many aircraft undergo during a production run.

At the time of the "Fokker Scourge" in 1915, there was a press campaign against the standardisation of Royal Aircraft Factory types in the Royal Flying Corps, allegedly in favour of superior designs available from the design departments of private British firms.

This slowly gained currency, especially because of the undeniable fact that the B.E.2c and B.E.2e were kept in production and in service long after they were obsolete and that the B.E.12 and B.E.12a were indisputable failures.

Research included wind tunnel testing and other aeronautical research, areas which offered rare opportunities for women in STEM fields at this time with examples including Frances Bradfield who worked at the RAE for her entire career from 1919 to her retirement; Muriel Glauert (née Barker) joined in 1918 as a researcher working in aerodynamics and Beatrice Shilling who went on to invent Miss Shilling's orifice, to improve the engine performance of RAF Hurricane and Spitfire fighters during the Battle of Britain as part of wider work at the RAE on aircraft engine problems during World War II.

Johanna Weber, a German mathematician who joined the RAE after World War II as part of Operation Surgeon to employ German aeronautical researchers and technicians and bring them to the UK, to prevent their technical knowledge falling into the hands of the Soviet occupying forces in Germany.

[20] Aircraft that were developed or tested at the RAE included the Hawker Siddeley Harrier and Concorde.

This facility remains in operation by QinetiQ, primarily for the development and testing of aircraft high lift systems.

[citation needed] The hero of Nevil Shute's 1948 novel No Highway is an eccentric "boffin" at Farnborough who predicts metal fatigue in the United Kingdom's new airliner, the fictional "Rutland Reindeer".

Stewart prepared for the role by shadowing Fred Jones OBE, a co-founder of the RAE Accident Section.