British Imperial Air Power: The Royal Air Forces and the Defense of Australia and New Zealand Between the World Wars

by Alex M Spencer, Richard Hallion (Foreword by)

Overview

British Imperial Air Power examines the air defense of Australia and New Zealand during the interwar period. It also demonstrates the difficulty of applying new military aviation technology to the defense of the global Empire and provides insight into the nature of the political relationship between the Pacific Dominions and Britain. Following World War I, both Dominions sought greater independence in defense and foreign policy. Public aversion to military matters and the economic dislocation resulting from the war and later the Depression left little money that could be provided for their respective air forces. As a result, the Empire’s air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create a strategy in the face of these handicaps. In order to survive, the British Empire’s military air forces offered themselves as a practical and economical third option in the defense of Britain’s global Empire, intending to replace the Royal Navy and British Army as the traditional pillars of imperial defense.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781557539403
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	06/15/2020
Series:	Purdue Studies in Aeronautics and Astronautics
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Alex M Spencer earned his PhD in modern European history from Auburn University. His research focuses on British and Commonwealth military aviation during the twentieth century. He curates two collections at the National Air and Space Museum: British and European military aircraft and flight materiel. Together they include the Supermarine Spitfire, Hawker Hurricane, de Havilland Mosquito, Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Me 262, Heinkel He 219, Arado Ar 234, and over sixteen thousand artifacts of personal items, including uniforms, flight clothing, memorabilia, ribbons, and medals. Spencer was the coeditor of Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: An Autobiography.

Read an Excerpt

At approximately 10 o’clock on the morning of February 19, 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy and Army Air Force opened a coordinated attack on Darwin, Australia. More than 188 aircraft launched from four aircraft carriers and fifty-five land-based bombers destroyed shipping and the harbor’s transport and military infrastructure. Nearly an hour later, a subsequent raid by Japanese army bombers attacked the Royal Australian Air Force base at Parap, destroying numerous aircraft and base facilities. From February 1942 through November 1943, the Japanese conducted sixty-four more air attacks on Darwin. In addition, the Japanese carried out similar strikes on Townsville, Katherine, Windham, Derby, Broome, and Port Hedland. Even though Australia and New Zealand joined the war in 1939, their respective air forces were ill prepared at the outbreak of war with Japan because the majority of their military assets had been sent to the Middle East in support of British operations.

The study of the development of the air defense of Great Britain’s Pacific Dominions demonstrates the difficulty of applying the emerging military aviation technology to the defense of the global British Empire during the interwar years. It also provides insight into the changing nature of the political relationship between the Dominions and Britain within the British imperial structure. At the end of World War I, both Australia and New Zealand secured independent control 2 BRITISH IMPERIAL AIR POWER of their respective armed forces through their sacrifices made on the battlefields in the Middle East and Western Front and declining confidence in British military leadership. Similar to the other nations that participated in the war, the population of these two Dominions in the 1920s developed a strong aversion to war, not wishing to repeat the sacrifices made by their soldiers, sailors, and airmen on someone else’s behalf. The economic dislocation experienced by the Dominions, created by the war and the Depression, meant little money was available to fund their respective air forces. As a result, the empire’s air services spent the entire interwar period attempting to create a comprehensive strategy in the face of these handicaps.

For many aviation advocates during the interwar period, the airplane represented a panacea to the imperial defense needs. They always prefaced their arguments with the word “potential.” The airplane could potentially replace the navy; it could potentially provide substantial savings in defense expenditure; it could potentially move rapidly to threatened regions; and it could potentially defend the coast from attack or invasion. For all of these claims, there was no supporting empirical data. In short, aviation advocates offered the air force as a third option for the empire’s defense, in an attempt to replace the Royal Navy and British Army.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: The First Imperial Air Defense Schemes, 1918–1919
CHAPTER 2: The Formation of the Royal Australian Air Force and the First Reassessments of Pacific Defenses, 1920–1921
CHAPTER 3: The Empire’s Air Defense: The Geddes Cuts of 1922, and the 1923 Imperial Conference and Their Influence on the Empire’s Air Defense, 1922–1923
CHAPTER 4: The Royal Air Force and Postwar Air Transport Defense Planning and the Airmail Scheme, 1919–1939
CHAPTER 5: Airships and the Empire: Defense, Schemes, and Disaster, 1919–1930
CHAPTER 6: Air Defense and the Labour Party: Singapore Naval Base and the 1926 Imperial Conference, 1924–1926
CHAPTER 7: Imperial Air Mobility, the Salmond Report, and Air Marshal Trenchard’s Last Salvo, 1927–1929
CHAPTER 8: Depression and Disarmament, 1929–1933
CHAPTER 9: The International Crises and Imperial Rearmament, 1934–1936
CHAPTER 10: The Final Preparations, 1937–1940
EPILOGUE
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"One of the keys to understanding British air power in the Second World War is discovering what happened in the interwar period. Alex Spencer, in an intriguing and compelling work, examines imperial relations between Britain and its Pacific Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. Utilising extensive archival material, Spencer traverses the immediate First World War, the doldrums of the 1920s and the tumultuous years leading up to the war with Germany and Japan. For the first time, we now have an illuminating history and analysis of the direction and demands of air power policy and initiatives linking London to Canberra to Wellington. Eminently readable and informative." —Adam Claasen , author of Fearless: The Extraordinary Untold Story of New Zealand’s Great War Airmen

From the Publisher

One of the keys to understanding British air power in the Second World War is discovering what happened in the interwar period. Alex Spencer, in an intriguing and compelling work, examines imperial relations between Britain and its Pacific Dominions of Australia and New Zealand. Utilising extensive archival material, Spencer traverses the immediate First World War, the doldrums of the 1920s and the tumultuous years leading up to the war with Germany and Japan. For the first time, we now have an illuminating history and analysis of the direction and demands of air power policy and initiatives linking London to Canberra to Wellington. Eminently readable and informative.”

Adam Claasen