Anyone help with this 1940s photo of RAF in India?

[Sunjester]

My wife has been sorting out family photos and come across this picture of her great uncle (I think, or it might be second cousin?), some relative of her dad anyway.

We know he was in the RAF in WW2, but that's about it. Looking at this photo he obviously spent some time in India and was involved with a fire brigade, presumably on an RAF airfield. Is there anyone out there who might have a bit of knowledge about such things and can shed any light on it?

Thank you.

[FifteensAway]

I can't identify but I'd question if in India based on the hats in the back two rows - unless what is now Afghanistan?  Seventy-five years on, it's going to get harder and harder to find people who know such things I'm afraid.  Good luck!  I am curious now.  I might even give Turkey as a possible option? 

[Ming]

Have you tried the Museum of RAF Fire fighting? It's based in Linconshire now having moved from RAF Manson in Kent. They have a website & contact numbers, if anyone can help you they might...

[dadlamassu]

I have tried enlarging it to see what the badge on the shirt pockets might be but failed. 

From the items in the photo it looks like  a locally recruited airfield fire service.  When I first looked at the faces I thought "Iraq".  So maybe one of the main RAF bases there?  Shaibah or Habbaniya maybe?  Both were used as staging posts to India.

You might try the RAF association if anyone can identify the badge or a research forum like http://www.rafcommands.com/forum/
Best of luck

[Cubs]

The badge on the shirt just says 'FB' from what I can see - Fire Brigade presumably.

From the hats and moustaches, it looks like a Muslim unit to me, which isn't that helpful (since most units were in the war). As others hint it could be from the north that was partitioned post-WW2 (what became Pakistan), which was (and is) mostly Muslim and preferred to the south for recruitment, but that's very broad speculation from some hats and moustaches!

This has a list of Indian RAF bases during the war (scroll down to India), but there is a lot of them.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_Royal_Air_Force_stations#Overseas

[FramFramson]

Potentially Sunjester may also be curious about what sorts of work the RAF were doing across the subcontinent.

Presumably the duties of the on-station fire brigade would be broadly similar on any airbase of any given nation in the war, so really the only questions are the location, and what sort of operations the airbase was a base for.

I suppose if you actually had a specific location, you could ask some more in-depth questions about specific events or missions carried out from your great-uncle's airbase, but pinpointing a specific location seems unlikely without more source information.

[dadlamassu]

A good starting point would be a request for his service record https://www.gov.uk/get-copy-military-service-records