How it works
Say the number after the word: angels five is 5,000 feet, angels twenty is 20,000 feet. It’s measured from sea level, and it’s used for friendly aircraft: a controller might tell a fighter to “climb angels two-five.”
Cherubs: the low version
For low flying there’s cherubs, the height “in hundreds of feet above ground level”: cherubs five is 500 feet off the ground. Note the difference: angels count from sea level, cherubs from the ground.
Since 1940
It was already standard in the Battle of Britain. The RAF’s model radio call from August 1940 reads “Tally Ho! Thirty bombers forty fighters Angels twenty...”: thirty bombers and forty fighters at twenty thousand feet. More on that in tally-ho.
