The Royal Air Force and Two World Wars

This history brings into perspective the story of the RAF from its earliest origins to the final days of the last war. Sir Maurice Dean served throughout the 1930s period of re-armament and the Second World War in the Air Ministry, holding a number of important posts which brought him into close contact with the RAF and the Air Staff. His experience of the force and its leaders at war, coupled with a wide understanding of the process of government, has equipped him to write this remarkable concise history. He covers the creation of the force as part of the Army, its coming of age during the First World War as a weapon in its own right, the early efforts to destroy it and its battle with the two older services, the pre-war period of rearmament and reorganisation, the race to re-equip, and the campaigns of the Second World War, where its responsibilities reached from mid-Atlantic to the Pacific. His account of the campaigns is balanced by studies of the bodies that evaluated, armed, equipped, transported and directed the RAF. Among other more controversial points discussed are Churchill's criticisms of re-armament, the rise of the Luftwaffe, the nature of Beaverbrook's contribution to aircraft production, the crucial question of 'Fighters for France' in May and June 1940, and the argument surrounding Dowding's relations with the Air Ministry. The author includes sketches of the great leaders and a new survey of the parts played by the maritime air forces and by Bomber Command in the final victory; nor does he shy away, unlike many writers, from the question of the morality of strategic bombing, a debate which led to a shabby appraisal of Bomber Command's part in the war.
This is not a book for those whose image of the RAF is of a Spitfire slow-rolling in a summer sky, nor for those who believe its sole monument to be the wreckage of Dresden and Hamburg. It is a book for all those interested in the concepts of warfare and defence, and the lessons of history.


by Sir Maurice Dean
Published by Cassell 1979 1st edition. 349pp index, appendices, bibliography. 15x22 very good, including d/j.






Note:
"Long" descriptions, where shown, may have been taken from the book's dust jacket notes, and as such are relevant to the date of publication (e.g. any references to "previously unpublished photographs" etc.) and not the present.

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