High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! RAF Coastal Command was a formation within the Royal Air Force (RAF). Founded in 1936, it was the RAF`s premier maritime arm, after the Royal Navy`s secondment of the Fleet Air Arm in 1937. Naval aviation was neglected in the inter-war period, 1919–1939, and as a consequence the service did not receive the resources it needed to develop properly or efficiently. This continued until the outbreak of the Second World War, during which it came to prominence. But owing to the Air Ministry`s concentration on RAF Fighter Command and RAF Bomber Command, Coastal Command was often referred to as the "Cinderella Service", a phrase first used by the First Lord of the Admiralty at the time A V Alexander.