What follows is the first chapter of a project I am working on at the moment. It deals witht he development of Tactical Air Power theory in Britain during the inter-war era. It offers a revisionist view in that it doesn't concentrate on its failure but more is successes. Comments are alsways welcome.

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It has often been argued by some historians, and contemporaries of the period, that the RAF entered the war with a singular purpose in mind, to win the war by strategic bombing.[i] This interpretation has been based upon the role of Marshal of the RAF Lord Trenchard and his distinct effect upon the role of the RAF. As Williamson Murray has commented:

‘…senior [RAF] air leaders held fast to Trenchard’s ideological belief in the bomber. This approach rejected co-operation with the other services.’[ii]

Lord Trenchard’s role in protecting the RAF from the inter-service squabbling which occurred in this period of intense political retrenchment and naivety has become central to the understanding of the development of the service. In order to defend the service from the budget cut backs, typified by the Ten year rule,[iii] Lord Trenchard pushed strategic bombing forward as the services raison d’etre. Thus this is what a significant amount of the literature on the inter war RAF has concentrated upon.[iv] This was done in part because of the problem inherent in funding a well equipped force which could perform all of the necessary roles linked to the use of air power. Thus Lord Trenchard put his faith, and that of the service, in the one aspect of air power which he believed to be decisive.[v]

While the development of a strategic bombing theory gave the RAF it’s raison d’etre, it certainly did not define what the service was. Many younger officers recognised the need to develop the service and one of the ways to do this was by showing how the service could be dominant on the battlefield in support of army. The one way this occurred was through the RAF’s operation in Britain’s colonies and protectorates of the Middle East. As one historian has commented ‘…a distinction must be drawn between the conditions in Britain as compared with those on the fringes of the Empire.’[vi]The use of RAF air power as a substitution for the army and navy in colonial control operations brought around some innovations in command and control measures needed to operate aircraft against ground targets it was also a training ground for some of the future leaders of the RAF especially those who were to go on and gain fame in the realm of tactical air power. Among these were Marshals of the RAF Lord Tedder and Sir John Slessor, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham and Air Chief Marshal Harry Broadhurst, each of these officer had at some point in the inter-war period served in the colonies. Indeed the eight squadrons based in Iraq provided excellent support for British infantry brigade based in the region and as Air Commodore Portal, the future Chief of the Air Staff, comments on the operations in the Middle East:

‘The use of the air-bomb and the machine gun in close support of troops on the ground has proved of the utmost value in police operations on the Indian frontier and elsewhere. It was brought to a very high state of perfection in the recent operations in Palestine where small bodies of troops were often held up by the fire of armed bands occupying strong positions. When this occurred, a W/T [Wireless] message was sent by the troops and so good was the organization what at almost any point in Palestine a formation of bombers would arrive within fifteen minutes of the origination of the message.’[vii]

While his claim of fifteen minutes response time may be a slight exaggerations based on what occurred during the Second World War we can certainly the see the nascent beginnings of a command and control network in these colonial operations that would be replicated in the coming war. Another advantage of these operations is what one historian has argued as ‘…small cadre of…officers sensitized to the problems of…mobile operations.’[viii]

As commented before it has traditionally been argued that the RAF’s pre-occupation was with strategic bombing in the inter-war years but as seen above this was not entirely the case in particular with reference to colonial operations. These operations not only had practical lessons but also had a great deal of theoretical effect on the writing of the period. One book which should probably held up with Guilio Douhet’s Command of the Air as a theoretical basis for all aerial operations is the future Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor’s Air Power and Armies.[ix] While Douhet’s work dealt with strategic bombing Slessor’s work dealt with the application of air power in relation to the battlefield. This is probably the main reason why it has been forgotten in the analysis of the period.

During his early service Slessor earned a reputation as a tactical expert and served on staff at the Army Staff College as the RAF instructor. This was because the previous holder of that position had not been able to discuss the broader aspects of air power and Trenchard had promised the CIGS, Field Marshal George Milne a more capable officer.[x] Slessor had also been tasked by Trenchard to re-write the RAF’s manual on co-operation with land forces. His work was revolutionary for the time and he concluded that a ‘…carefully organized attack on the enemy system of supply…’ would produced positive results as this is where they are ‘…vulnerable…’ especially if the enemy is highly organised.[xi] In this manual we can see the basis of theories on air interdiction operations in support of land forces. Slessor would continue to expand on these ideas in Air Power and Armies while on his tour of duty in India.

To argue that Slessor was the only one to make arguments for the use of air power in support of the army is to miss some of the important work which appeared in the pages of the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute in the inter-war period. During this period there was no less than twelve articles written on the subject of co-operation between the two services. Some of them were written by some of the future leading lights of both services including Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh Mallory, future commander of the Allied Expeditionary Air Forces during D-Day and the subsequent campaign, and Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Pile, who commanded the army’s Anti-Aircraft Command.[xii] As Leigh-Mallory commented in his lecture on co-operation between aircraft and mechanised forces:

‘While…aircraft may influence the operations of armoured forces…armoured forces may exercise considerable influence over air operations [thus] it is evident that these two modern arms can exercise a considerable influence on the…other.’[xiii]

While it can be argued that a lot of theory existed in the inter-war period, the major issue was that despite Slessor’s efforts, and many other junior officers, in the RAF’s manual AP 1176, tactical air power was low ranking in the services priorities and that very little of the theory was turned into official doctrine. Thus this affected the operational effectiveness of the armed services especially co-operation between the RAF and the Army, who shared a mutual enmity towards each other. Thus because of inter and intra-service parochialism, Bomber command saw Fighter and Coastal command as just as large threats as the Army and the Royal Navy, there was as Williamson Murray and Brian Bond have suggested ‘…a general lack of inter-service and inter-arms co-operation that spilled over into the Second World War with disastrous results.’[xiv] Thus this is the position the RAF would enter the Second World War, a service with a great deal of theory on the application of air power in relation to ground operations but with not much official doctrine. Soon its limitation, based around unsuitable equipment and attempt to initiate a doctrine on support for ground operations, would be realised in the Battle for France.


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[i] General Lord Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) at the outbreak of the Second World War, saw the RAF’s main role as strategic bombing as he believed them incapable of supporting the army sufficiently. He even pushed in discussion with the Air Staff for attacks on the Ruhr as he believed it would be ‘decisive’. Bond B ‘Ironside: Field Marshal Lord Ironside’ in Keegan J (Ed.) Churchill’s Generals (Abacus: 1999) p.23

[ii] Murray W War in the Air 1914 – 45 (Cassell: 1999) p. 88

[iii] The basis of this rule was that ‘…the British Empire will not be involved in any large war over the next ten year…’ W. D. Gruner, ‘The British Political, Social and Economic System and the Decision for Peace or War’, British Journal of International Studies, 6 (1980), p. 212. Cited in Overy R The Road to War (Macmillan: 1989) p. 65. Also see Roskill S ‘The Ten Year Rule – The Historical Facts’ Royal United Service Institute Journal, 117:1 (1972: Mar)

[iv] Examples of this interpretation are Powers B Strategy Without a Slide Rule: British Air Strategy 1914-1939 (Croom Helm: 1976) Smith M British Air Strategy Between the Wars (Oxford, Oxford University Press: 1984) and more recently Davis Biddle T Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press: 2002)

[v] For aspects of Trenchard’s effect upon the RAF see Terraine J ‘Beginnings’ and ‘Disarmers and Bombers’ in The Right of the Line (Wordsworth Editions: 1997) pp. 3-15

[vi] Gladman B ‘The Development of Tactical Air Doctrine in North Africa, 1940-43’ in Cox S and Gray P (Eds.) Air Power History: Turning Points from Kitty Hawk to Kosovo (Frank Cass: 2002) p. 189

[vii] Portal C F A Air Commodore, DSO, MC ‘Air Force Co-operation in Policing the Empire’ Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 82 (1937: Feb/Nov) p. 346

[viii] Muller R R ‘Close Air Support’ in Murray W and Millett A Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1996) p. 171

[ix] Douhet G Command of the Air (Faber & Faber: 1942) and Slessor J C Air Power and Armies (Oxford, Oxford University Press: 1936). Of interest in is widely claimed that Douhet had a wide effect on airmen of the period but in recent years this has come in for some scrutiny from revisionist historians. See ‘The Douhet Myth’ in Buckley J Air Power in the Age of Total War (UCL Press: 1999) pp. 74-77

[x] ‘John C. Slessor and the Genesis of Air Interdiction’ in Meilinger P S Airwar: Theory and Practice (Frank Cass: 2003) pp. 66-67

[xi] RAF Museum, RAF Hendon, File 8951 ‘Employment of Army Co-Operation Squadrons’ RAF Manual AP 1176, 1932, Ch. V

[xii] Leigh-Mallory T, Wing Commander, DSO ‘Air Co-Operation with Mechanized Forces’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, 75 (1930: Feb/Nov) pp. 565-577, Pile F A, Lieutenant Colonel, DSO, MC, psc, Royal Tank Corps ‘The Army’s Air Needs’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, 71 (1926: Feb/Nov) pp. 725-727

[xiii] Leigh-Mallory T, Wing Commander, DSO ‘Air Co-Operation with Mechanized Forces’ pp. 576-577

[xiv] Bond B and Murray W ‘The British Armed Forces, 1918-39’ in Millett A R and Murray W (Eds.) Military Effectiveness: Volume II, The Interwar Period (Allen and Unwin: 1988) p. 111

As Clemenceau remarked of the Trenchard's Independent bomber force of 1918 "Independent of who - of God?"

The rise of strategic bombing in the RAF (and in paralllel in America), in my opinion, had much to do with the need of the RAF to justify its existence as an independent force in the budgetary merry-go-round of the 30s. The Treasury could see a need for the Royal Navy (as a trading nation) and the Army in its role as an imperial policeman. But what about the RAF? It tried out as an imperial policeman in the ME, but much of this was to economise on troop numbers. Not very successfully either.

So if politicians are mesmerised by Douhet and believe the bomber will always get through, what else can you do if you want continued treasury funding?

Army co-operation did receive some thought, chiefly with the Lysander which proved a disaster in 1940. Home defence was minimal until the development of radar convinced some politicians that a fighter force my be worth shelling out for. Though exactly who it was meant to defend against was moot, as the Luftwaffe couldn't hit much of Britain from its home bases in Germany.

Which left bombing, by day in order to identify targets accurately.