https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2017-09-30/register/the-royal-air-force-prepares-for-take-off-v36snvwn5
The clamour for reprisals against German cities after heavy bombing raids over Britain meant that the creation of a separate air force made political and military sense
A British Handley Page 0/100, a four-seater heavy bomber, capable of carrying 2,000lb of bombs, with an SE 5 in the backgroundWhile fatherhood of the Royal Air Force is usually attributed to Major-General Sir Hugh (later Marshal of the RAF Lord) “Boom” Trenchard, who led the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) on the Western Front, a paternity case could equally be brought against the South African Lieutenant-General (later Field Marshal Sir) Jan Smuts. Daylight raids on London in September 1917 propelled his paper on the reorganisation of aviation to the top of the war cabinet’s agenda.
Jan Smuts had been a successful Boer commando leader in the South African War a decade and half earlier, but with the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 as a self-governing dominion, he had done much towards reconciliation. Indeed, in many ways he was as much an imperialist as his former adversaries. In 1914, when defence minister, he had put on uniform and taken command in the field against a Boer insurrection, then led operations against German South-West Africa (now Namibia), and later in German East Africa. In the spring of 1917 he came to London to take part in the first imperial conference of the war.
In late 1916, during the Somme offensive, Sir Douglas Haig, the commander-in-chief of British armies on the Western Front, began pressing urgently for 20 more squadrons of aircraft. However, these could not be found without borrowing from the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), and it became clear that something was wrong with the supply of equipment and trained personnel for the two separate air services.
While the RFC was preoccupied with the war in France, the RNAS was growing anxious about the air defence of its dockyards and arsenals in Britain. Raids by zeppelins, the generic name for German airships irrespective of manufacture, and by Gotha bombers, were increasing, and against civilian targets. The RNAS had taken offensive action against the zeppelins from the start, bombing the airship sheds at Cologne and Dusseldorf in October 1914.
The success of these prompted Captain (later Rear-Admiral Sir) Murray Sueter, the director of the Admiralty’s air department, to commission the aircraft manufacturer Frederick Handley Page to produce a longer-range machine capable of dropping a heavier bomb — as Sueter put it, “a bloody paralyser of an aircraft”. The result was the Handley Page Type O, the first British strategic bomber, which came into service towards the end of 1916. Twin-engine and a crew of four/five, it had a range of 700 miles, 8 hours’ endurance, a top speed of just under 100mph, and could carry 2,000lb (907kg) of bombs.
The airships countered by attacking at dusk and in darkness, using factory and street lighting as guides before blackout was enforced. The defending aircraft found them difficult to attack because they flew high and their top speed was about equal to theirs. At the start of the war aircraft did not have a fast enough rate of climb to intercept before bombs were dropped. Defended by five machineguns, the zeppelin was a dangerous adversary.
Nevertheless, it was an early model, a BE2c biplane, flown by Lieutenant William Leefe-Robinson, that brought down the first airship over England, at Cuffley in Hertfordshire on the night of September 2, 1916. Leefe-Robinson repeatedly circled the zeppelin, which was illuminated by several searchlight beams, firing at close range into its belly until it caught fire. For this action he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
The Germans’ periodic ascendancy in aerial combat on the Western Front – notably the so-called “Fokker scourge” from June 1915 until the allies produced comparable fighters ten months later, and then “Bloody April” (1917), when the German “flying circuses” gained temporary mastery again — was a growing concern of GHQ in France, and the War Ministry.
The press began to agitate too. On October 31, 1916, The Times thundered at Lord Curzon’s Air Board, which had been formed in May to improve coordination:
“It is a week since we called attention to the deplorable deadlock which has paralysed the Air Board, and everything which has come to our notice since has continued that warning. In our opinion the Board was always doomed to failure. We described it when it was appointed as “one more stopgap, which can only succeed by a miracle”; and the miracle has not happened.
The fact is that the Air Board has never possessed the willing confidence and co-operation of both the Services concerned, and it was never invested with the formal authority required to override them. That it has existed for months without open and notorious scandal we attribute, first, to the energy with which it has faced an impossible task; and, second, to the supremacy which our airmen have lately achieved at the front.
The public, and perhaps the government, have been obsessed with this temporary triumph. There has been no long view of the reaction which will follow unless the organisation of the Air Services — and especially the design, construction, and purchase of machines for both — is placed on a satisfactory footing.”
However, the Air Board had never had the co-operation of either service, nor the formal authority to override them.
Reaction of a sort came soon enough, because zeppelin raids on London increased, and almost with impunity. On the night of October 13 five airships dropped bombs killing 71 people. More RFC aircraft were diverted from the Western Front and elsewhere to cover the capital and east coast ports, and there was talk of forming a separate air ministry, and a separate air service, better to focus on air defence and strategic bombing.
David Lloyd George, the prime minister, was acutely aware of his growing political predicament. The “Passchendaele” offensive was going nowhere but to a great many graves, while the Germans were ranging almost at will over England. Yet the effects of the Royal Navy’s blockade of Germany — which were steadily but surely undermining the enemy’s ability to fight — were not discernible to the man in the street (nor, indeed, to many senior military officers). A display of determination to deal with the aerial raiders by forming a separate force, and giving the Germans a taste of their own medicine by bombing, which would also supplement the work of the blockade, made both political and military sense.
He was not without opposition at home when it came to strategic bombing, especially when it involved civilian deaths, which looked like reprisals. Bishops in the House of Lords spoke against it (as they would in the Second World War, notably after the bombing of Dresden).
In April 1917, in retaliation for the sinking of two hospital ships, the RNAS bombed Freiburg. The Bishop of Ely declared bluntly: “A policy of reprisals is essentially wrong”. On June 13, 162 civilians were killed and 400 injured, including many children, in a daylight raid on London by 15 Gothas. Seventy-two tons of bombs fell within a mile radius of Liverpool Street Station, while others fell at Fenchurch Street and in the East End. At a service for children killed in their schoolroom, the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, a strong supporter of the war effort from the outset (he had been a chaplain to the London Rife Brigade – Territorials – since 1901), echoed the protests, saying that he did not believe “the mourners would wish that 16 German babies should lie dead to avenge their dead”.
RFC and RNAS aircraft had been barely able to get within striking distance of the bombers. When they returned on July 7 the defenders made better contact, but only one Gotha was destroyed and the casualty list was still high at 57 killed and 193 injured. The Daily Mail reported that Britain had not been “so humiliated since the Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames in 1667”, calling for the heads of those responsible.
The clamour for reprisals against German cities was as loud in parliament as it was in the popular press and at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. William Joynson-Hicks, MP for Manchester North, and later a notably authoritarian home secretary, told Lloyd George: “Every time the Germans raid London, British airmen must blot out a German town.”
Lloyd George decided he must act. In June he had co-opted Smuts to the war cabinet, and now he asked him to carry out a study into the air defence of Britain, the air organisation generally, and the arrangements for the higher direction of aerial operations. Smuts agreed at once. Indeed, he had already been consulting widely. The new chairman of the Air Board, Lord Cowdray, told him that aircraft production had so improved in late months that by 1918 there would be 3,000 machines surplus to known requirements, which would amply sustain an independent strategic bombing force.
Within a month (August 17), Smuts had submitted his principal report to the war cabinet, recommending: “We must create the new directing organisation — the new Ministry and Air Staff which could properly handle this new instrument of offence, and equip it with the best brains at our disposal for the purpose. The task of planning the new Air Service organisation [amalgamating the RFC and RNAS] and thinking out and preparing for schemes of aerial operations next summer must tax our Air experts to the utmost.”
The report met with a mixed response. The RFC and RNAS did not want to lose the connection with their respective services. Nor did Field Marshal Haig, and Admiral Sir David Beatty commanding the Home Fleet, want to lose command of their supporting aircraft, although Sir “Wullie” Robertson, the chief of the Imperial General Staff, and Sir John Jellicoe, the First Sea Lord, had no strong objection.
Lloyd George began to have second thoughts, and, his spirits low with the news from France of the faltering “Passchendaele” campaign, in early September took a holiday. The press, not knowing of the actual Smuts report, but hearing rumours of dissension in government and among senior officers, again began pressing for action, not least when the Germans mounted heavy attacks on London and the east coast over four successive nights at the end of September.
On October 1 the war cabinet authorised retaliatory raids on Germany, although these proved slow in materialising. The next week, the cabinet received a paper showing that German aircraft production was increasing alarmingly, and on October 15 during continued questions in parliament, Andrew Bonar Law, the leader of the House of Commons, sensing serious disquiet, hinted at the formation of a separate service. It was confirmed in an official announcement the next day.
Much to Lloyd George’s relief, but to the dismay of many, including “Boom” Trenchard, who at this time opposed the concept of an independent strategic bombing force the Air Force Bill would pass through parliament with little opposition that November.
The Royal Air Force would formally come into being on April 1, 1918. The initials “RAF”, according to those who opposed its creation, stood for “Royal April Foolers.”
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