of warfare. His passionate belief in the potential of a bomber offensive against an enemy nation was to dominate the Royal Air Force for more than twenty years.
At the armistice, the RAF was larger than the British Army had been in 1914. But in the first months of peace, this vast organization was almost totally dismantled. Like the other two services, the air force found its annual financial estimates cut to the bone. Indeed, throughout the 1920s it would have been difficult for the RAF to resist total dismemberment but for Trenchard’s invention of the new scheme of ‘Air Control’ for some of the wilder frontiers of the Empire, notably Iraq. Trenchard persuaded the Government that rather than maintain expensive standing garrisons of troops and dispatch punitive expeditions against recalcitrant tribesmen,the RAF could keep them at bay with occasional prescriptions of air attack. In the next twenty years, the RAF’s only operational experience was gained dropping bombs, usually without opposition, on the hillside villages of rebellious peasants. Local Political Officers remained sceptical of Air Control and its achievements, but Trenchard and his followers were convinced that, in the years between the two world wars, it was only their well-publicized activities abroad which sufficed to save the RAF from extinction at home.
Between 1920 and 1938 the air force commanded only an average 17 per cent of Britain’s paltry defence budget. The RAF share fell to a low of less than £11 million in 1922, and never passed £20 million a year until the great drive for rearmament began, in 1935. There was no question in Trenchard’s mind of trying to do everything, of seeking a balanced force. With such tiny resources, he concentrated them where he believed that they mattered – on his bomber squadrons. He was convinced that fighters had no chance of effectively countering a bomber attack, and he grudged every fighter unit that he was compelled to keep in being as a sop to public and political opinion. Trenchard’s air force was to be devoted decisively to strategic rather than tactical ends.
In my view [he wrote, in an important and controversial memorandum to his fellow Chiefs of Staff in May 1928] the object of all three services is the same, to defeat the enemy nation, not merely its army, navy or air force.
For any army to do this, it is almost always necessary as a preliminary step to defeat the enemy’s army, which imposes itself as a barrier that must first be broken down.
It is not, however, necessary for an air force, in order to defeat the enemy nation, to defeat its armed forces first. Air power can dispense with that intermediate step, can pass over the enemy navies and armies, and penetrate the air defences and attack direct the centres of production, transportation and communication from which the enemy war effort is maintained . . . The stronger side, by developing the more powerful offensive, will provoke in his weaker enemy increasingly insistent calls for the protective employment of aircraft. In this way he will throw the enemy on to the defensive and it will be in this manner that air superiority will be obtained, and not by direct destruction of air forces.
In the bitter struggle to retain a raison d’être for the RAF as an independent service, Trenchard argued that aircraft provided an opportunity to wage an entirely new kind of war. The army and the Royal Navy greeted his prophecies with memoranda in which conventional courtesies did little to mask withering scorn. But Trenchard was uncrushable. Although often completely inarticulate at a conference table, ‘Boom’ (a nickname his remarkable voice had earned for him) possessed much personal presence and the power of inspiring great affection. Through the 1920s he gathered around himself in the middle ranks of the air force a body of passionate young disciples, not only captured by his vision of air power, but devoted to the old man himself.
At the armistice, the RAF was larger than the British Army had been in 1914. But in the first months of peace, this vast organization was almost totally dismantled. Like the other two services, the air force found its annual financial estimates cut to the bone. Indeed, throughout the 1920s it would have been difficult for the RAF to resist total dismemberment but for Trenchard’s invention of the new scheme of ‘Air Control’ for some of the wilder frontiers of the Empire, notably Iraq. Trenchard persuaded the Government that rather than maintain expensive standing garrisons of troops and dispatch punitive expeditions against recalcitrant tribesmen,the RAF could keep them at bay with occasional prescriptions of air attack. In the next twenty years, the RAF’s only operational experience was gained dropping bombs, usually without opposition, on the hillside villages of rebellious peasants. Local Political Officers remained sceptical of Air Control and its achievements, but Trenchard and his followers were convinced that, in the years between the two world wars, it was only their well-publicized activities abroad which sufficed to save the RAF from extinction at home.
Between 1920 and 1938 the air force commanded only an average 17 per cent of Britain’s paltry defence budget. The RAF share fell to a low of less than £11 million in 1922, and never passed £20 million a year until the great drive for rearmament began, in 1935. There was no question in Trenchard’s mind of trying to do everything, of seeking a balanced force. With such tiny resources, he concentrated them where he believed that they mattered – on his bomber squadrons. He was convinced that fighters had no chance of effectively countering a bomber attack, and he grudged every fighter unit that he was compelled to keep in being as a sop to public and political opinion. Trenchard’s air force was to be devoted decisively to strategic rather than tactical ends.
In my view [he wrote, in an important and controversial memorandum to his fellow Chiefs of Staff in May 1928] the object of all three services is the same, to defeat the enemy nation, not merely its army, navy or air force.
For any army to do this, it is almost always necessary as a preliminary step to defeat the enemy’s army, which imposes itself as a barrier that must first be broken down.
It is not, however, necessary for an air force, in order to defeat the enemy nation, to defeat its armed forces first. Air power can dispense with that intermediate step, can pass over the enemy navies and armies, and penetrate the air defences and attack direct the centres of production, transportation and communication from which the enemy war effort is maintained . . . The stronger side, by developing the more powerful offensive, will provoke in his weaker enemy increasingly insistent calls for the protective employment of aircraft. In this way he will throw the enemy on to the defensive and it will be in this manner that air superiority will be obtained, and not by direct destruction of air forces.
In the bitter struggle to retain a raison d’être for the RAF as an independent service, Trenchard argued that aircraft provided an opportunity to wage an entirely new kind of war. The army and the Royal Navy greeted his prophecies with memoranda in which conventional courtesies did little to mask withering scorn. But Trenchard was uncrushable. Although often completely inarticulate at a conference table, ‘Boom’ (a nickname his remarkable voice had earned for him) possessed much personal presence and the power of inspiring great affection. Through the 1920s he gathered around himself in the middle ranks of the air force a body of passionate young disciples, not only captured by his vision of air power, but devoted to the old man himself.
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