The RAF's Struggles to Prepare for the Big One

As I write this, next to the computer is a mug (full of tea), marked with the streamlined monochrome logo of the US Air Force on one side and the numeral “386” on the other. It was given out as a party favor, years ago, at a briefing by Air Force leadership on the results of a force-sizing study that had been tasked with determining how many squadrons the Air Force would require to meet the totality of its operational commitments. The answer had been 386 squadrons of combat and combat-support aircraft. The Air Force had hoped that this number would provide a bumper-sticker simple force structure objective that would have had traction with the Congress and public alike, much as the 600-ship navy had been in the 1980s.

The significance of 386 proved transient. Soon after, the Air Force was pressing the Congress not to increase but decrease the number of its squadrons, retiring older aircraft and instead investing in developing new technologies. The Congress, so far, has remained largely unimpressed by the Air Force arguments.

The story of the number 386 and its limited life as an aspirational pole star for the US Air Force is germane to Adrian Phillips’ book about the series of RAF modernization plans, identified by the letters A through M, which were central to Britain’s rearmament, starting in 1933. Like the US Air Force’s “386”, at the heart of the RAF’s modernization plans were critical questions. How many squadrons? How many airplanes? Which airplanes? (and where and when will they be built)? To carry out which missions? How much will they cost? Where will they be based?

Many of the RAF rearmament plans that this book discusses, like the ‘386’ figure, did not come to grips with these questions. The issues of how aircrew to fly in this expanded force and technicians to support them would be recruited and trained was not part of their story. The book looks at the methodologies – or lack of them – that led to the force-structure requirements and threat projections that set the direction of RAF rearmament, as expressed in these modernization plans, in the critical prewar years.

While the US Air Force’s ‘386’ number came from studies and simulations, this book focuses on how inputs used to shape the prewar RAF modernization plans emerged from the conflicting hopes, fears and assumptions of an RAF’s uniformed leadership committed to waging war through strategic bombing, and governments that believed “the bomber would always get through”, and that they have achieved “peace in our time” and were committed to avoiding repeats of the battles of the Great War. Also participating in the process were the Treasury, that had to pay the bills, and industry, that had to design and build the airplanes, and many other actors in a complex process. Not to forget the Germans. The enemy gets a vote as well.

This is the author’s third book on British national security and politics in the late 1930s. He knows the sources – the endnotes are largely to material in the National Archives (UK) – and the stories of the people involved. There is a useful dramatis personae provided. A timeline, showing how they overlapped with government, world events and aircraft orders, would have been useful.

This book is not a comprehensive narrative of the RAF rearmament, which would have to be a much larger book, or of the people involved, making decisions in a rapidly changing world that, in retrospect, it is apparent that few, if any, understood. Rather, it is a study of a core question that determined the course of that rearmament: the relations between the RAF and the British governments of those years, especially the allocation of resources between defensive (fighter) an offensive (bomber) capability at a time when RAF strategy and doctrine strongly emphasized the latter.

With a continental commitment considered politically infeasible until 1939, after it became terribly apparent Munich would not, in fact, bring “peace in our time”, strategic bombing was seen as the only way Britain could consider fighting a European war. The RAF had been willing to invest in air defense as well in the 1920s – the giant concrete sound detectors intended to provide distant early warning of air raids can still be seen near Deal – but when the Great Depression hit, the service leaders triaged reduced resources to preserve their core capabilities, the bombers. When rearmament first appeared, bombers were understandably at the top of the RAF’s priorities. But it would be mid-war – and after much redesign work by industry – before the airplanes that the “Bomber Barons” wanted would be available in meaningful numbers. The RAF was uninterested, prewar, in building capabilities that would prove vital once the shooting started, such as the ability to operate fighter squadrons in France or defend strategic objectives such as Malta.

The book emphasizes this ongoing process of the RAF vs. government dynamic rather than the individuals – though they were an interesting and dramatic cast of characters – and aircraft involved. Winston Churchill successfully used the rearmament issue to revive his political career, which had been derailed by unpopular stands on India and the abdication crisis, but this book shows he remained an outsider in the relationship between the government and the RAF. Similarly, this book does not focus on the process of setting requirements, designing and building the aircraft themselves and how they often reflected failed attempts to introduce then-new technologies. Many – indeed, most – of these airplanes fell short of being operationally capable or, sometimes, of being able to fly at all. Planning by the RAF, in 1936, relied heavily on what became the Avro Manchester as its “Ideal Bomber”, capable of being a dive-bomber, torpedo bomber, catapult-launched and self-deploying worldwide, able to level German cities or fly out to defend Singapore from the Japanese navy. However, its Rolls Royce Vulture engines proved to be total failures, and, in its brief operational service, it could successfully do none of these things. When Flight Lieutenant “Kipper” Herring of 83 Squadron brought a Manchester home on one engine, it was widely felt that never was a Distinguished Flying Cross better deserved.

This book does not tell the complete story of the miscalculations and poor strategy in its title. Within its scope, it does a good job at setting out the crucial RAF-government relationship and how they – only just – avoided disaster and enabled the massive force expansion that was required to win the war. The RAF had the forces that were able to prevail during the Battle of Britain in 1940 largely in spite of rather than because of the decisions made in those years. The RAF’s bomber force, committed to strategic bombing, received the greatest investment and emphasis throughout the interwar years, but proved largely ineffective until it acquired serious war-fighting capability, starting in 1942. However, the RAF never experienced the comprehensive failures of rearmament and industry that afflicted British programs to deliver tanks to the army or aircraft to the Fleet Air Arm.

Today, there are no more Bomber Barons in the RAF and the numbers of their US counterparts have been whittled down to a small flock, led by a four-star sitting at a desk inherited from Curtis LeMay. But the poor (or nonexistent) strategy and miscalculation that are this book’s subtitle remained widespread. Claims that any set of historical events has “lessons” for current or future decision-makers must be examined carefully. Deciding on a target number or force structure remains a difficult task. The British 1930s experience can provide insights, including how easily the “poor strategy and miscalculation” that is the book’s subtitle came about, from the interaction of a highly professional military service with its government.

The relation between service and government that is this book’s focus has become more complex and fraught and less capable of delivering results. It took six years for the “Ideal Bomber” envisioned by the RAF leadership in 1936 to become the squadrons of Avro Manchesters that failed in combat. But this sad story amounted to instant gratification compared with today’s realities. The Joint Strike Fighter program started in 1993. The aircraft that resulted from it, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, may yet transition into full rate production by the time of its thirtieth birthday. But don’t bet on it.

Note: Rearming the RAF for the Second World War is also available in e-editions.

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