Royal Air Force
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern BBWBWBBBBBW.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 11 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=3586
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1988 — Royal Air Force (register-of-tartans, record)
First designed in 1989 by Arthur Mackie an ex Royal Air Force pilot of Forfar, Angus. The original intention was a design for the Royal Air Force but was adopted by the Women's Auxillary Air Force Association as part of their uniform in 1990 when the tartan name was Air Force. Members of the WAAF's Association have worn this distinctive uniform at the annual Remembrance Day Parade at the Cenotaph in London with great pride. In 2002 Arthur was contacted by the Air Ministry to enquire if the tartan could be adopted as the "Royal Air Force tartan" to equip the Royal Air Force pipe bands which was initially displayed for the first time at the Edinburgh Military tattoo in Edinburgh in 2003. The particular colours can be interpreted in many ways, light and dark blues reflect the changing moods of the sky, white stripes for the clouds and a red stripe in recognition of all those who gave their lives while serving in the RAF. See www.kamrafa.co.uk, Royal Air Force tartan and www.mactartan.co.uk Home of the Royal Air Force Tartan. Design registered with the Patent Office expires 2014. - 1989, July — Royal Air Force (Military) (tartans-authority, record)
First designed in 1989 by Arthur Mackie of Strathmore Woollen Co. of Forfar, Angus and still woven by them. Its original name was "Air Force" and it was accepted by the Women's Auxillary Air Force Association in 1990 and was worn by its members as part of their uniform. Apparently they wore this with great pride in their annual march past the Cenotaph in London for the Remembrance Parade. After quite a bit of lobbying of the Ministry of Defence (especially by the past Commanding Officer of RAF Leuchars in Fife, Air Commdore Jack Haines) the Air Force Board accepted - in 2002 - the tartan as the official Royal Air Force tartan and authorised a change of name. The RAF Ceremonial Office at Bentley Priory (old RAF Fighter Command HQ) is now (2002) seeking sponsorship to equip the four or five RAF pipe bands with the tartan. Official authorisation contained in defence Council Instructions, Royal Air Force dated 14th June 2002 39.02. Other military tartans by Strathmore include US Navy (Edzell), RAF Leuchars, US Forces Thurso, US Air Force Reserve Pipe Band. Products in the tartan are now available at www.kamrafa.co.uk - the Kirriemuir Aviation Museum in Angus, Scotland. See also www.mactartan.co.uk
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 1988 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 3586
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 2123
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 2123
Thread count
DR/6 T4 LB14 T6 LB40 DB8 DBi16 T40 DR6 T14 W/4
One full sett is 306 threads.
Palette
| Colour | Shade | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|
| T | #00879F #00879F | oklch(57.4% 0.102 216.1) |
| LB | #B5BBDE #B5BBDE | oklch(79.9% 0.050 277.6) |
| DB | #003C64 #003C64 | oklch(34.5% 0.089 246.0) |
| DB | #1C0070 #1C0070 | oklch(26.3% 0.162 277.1) |
| DR | #55120C #55120C | oklch(30.0% 0.099 29.3) |
| W | #F7F7F7 #F7F7F7 | oklch(97.6% 0.000 89.9) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s11/dr3t2lb7t3lb20db4dbi8t20dr3t7w2x2db1106275-dbi1404245/