ABSTRACT
Attempts to influence the course of the war through the direct use of airpower against tactical or strategic objectives had brought little return. There is no place in this study for a detailed analysis of the RAF's ultimately successful struggle for survival in the 1920s. With all of the services having to prove their viability to earn an adequate share of a reduced budget, it was natural that the navy should want back its carrier and coastal patrol aircraft and the army should be anxious to develop its own artillery observation and infantry co-operation machines. Unfortunately, there was little in the RAF's wartime record to give it the right to peacetime independence. In one sense, premature independence was the father of Bomber Command; in another it was behind the fact that Britain, which in 1918 had possessed the best tactical air force in the world, was in 1939 forced to make do with a poor second.
