Formation & Interwar

The interwar years were defined by two simultaneous struggles: the RAF's fight for institutional survival, and its search for a role that would justify that survival. Hugh Trenchard, the service's first Chief of the Air Staff, became the apostle of strategic bombing — the doctrine that air power could win wars independently, without the need for armies or navies. It was a controversial theory, but it kept the RAF alive.

Across the empire, the RAF policed vast territories at a fraction of the cost of ground forces. In Iraq, India and the Northwest Frontier, air control became the RAF's primary peacetime function — controversial in its methods, but effective in demonstrating the service's utility to a Treasury determined to cut defence spending.