The Royal Air Force in Texas: Training British Pilots in Terrell during World War II

Chapter 1: Inception

4 Chapter 1 Inception At the close of World War I in 1918, the Royal Air Force (formerly the Royal Flying Corps) contained 185 squadrons, 291,175 personnel, and was the largest air power in the world. During the 1920s and 1930s Britain’s military power declined precipitously . By 1922 the number of squadrons had fallen to twenty-eight, only eight of which were in England, and only three of these were allocated for home defense; the rest of the RAF squadrons were scattered throughout the British Empire. At the same time, the French air force deployed 126 squadrons.1 Facing financial crisis, successive British governments slashed military spending and appropriations for armaments. During the 1920s, Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Hugh Trenchard, commander of the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, laid the groundwork for the modern RAF. Trenchard fought doggedly and stubbornly in the face of considerable political and inter-service opposition to save the RAF as an independent service. He also formed a reserve of volunteer pilots who trained on weekends and could be called upon in case of emergency. The low cost appealed to the government. These efforts, the establishment of the RAF Technical College at Halton, and the creation of the Royal Air Force college at Cranwell to train a cadre of professional officers earned Trenchard the sobriquet, “father of the RAF” (a term he despised).2 In the early 1930s, the Air Council for Research and Development fostered the development of the science of radar and two low-wing, retractable gear, monoplane fighters, the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire. Both fighters were powered by the new Rolls Royce Merlin engine and mounted Inception 5 the phenomenal armament of eight machine guns. The first Hurricanes began entering service in late 1937, followed by Spitfires in mid-1938.3 Due to meager funding and limited production facilities , their numbers were pitifully small. On the eve of World War II, a bare minimum number of Hurricane and Spitfire squadrons, combined with a defensive network made up of early warning radar stations along England’s southern coast, anti-aircraft batteries, and an observer corps, all linked by telephone with central command stations, would be ready only just in the nick of time thanks to the dogged determination of a few dedicated RAF officers and a few outspoken public men in the face of abject apathy and political opposition. Historians have laid the blame for Britain’s unpreparedness for World War II on the governments of prime ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, and Neville Chamberlain.OnlyWinstonChurchill,outofgovernmentandlargely discredited, along with a few friends, spoke out warning of the growing threat from Adolf Hitler and Nazism. But the government’s priorities represented the feelings of the vast majority of British citizens whose memories were still fresh of almost a million British Commonwealth dead in Flanders fields during the Great War, the war to end all wars. British citizens and government officials alike branded Churchill a warmonger, scaremonger, and an alarmist. Their faith and the faith of their governments lay first in world organizations such as the League of Nations and treaties to limit armaments, such as the Washington Naval Treaty. When those failed and the massive German rearmament had been confirmed , their fear turned to appeasement. Prominent men such as American aviation hero Col. Charles Lindberg fueled these fears when, after several visits to Germany, he declared in September 1938 that England and France, “are far too weak in the air to protect themselves. . . . a war now might easily result in the loss of European civilization.”4 Chamberlain attempted to calm these fears by meeting personally with Hitler over the matter of the Sudetenland and afterwards wrote, “I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”5 6 Chapter 1 After the failure of appeasement in the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland, and finally Munich, the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, forced England and France reluctantly into war. Eight months of inaction, known as the phony war, followed the fall of Poland until May 1940 when German panzer and infantry divisions supported by the Luftwaffe attacked through Belgium into the Low Countries and through the Ardennes into France. Chamberlain resigned as prime minister and King George VI summoned Winston Churchill and asked him to form...