ABSTRACT
Trenchard's 'policy of relentless and incessant offensive' has been surrounded by controversy since its inception. An analysis of British casualty statistics suggests that the interdiction tactics pursued by the British fighter force often succeeded in their primary objective of protecting army co-operation machines. When Fourth Army Headquarters attempted in mid-1917 to substitute large-scale raids on enemy aerodromes for 'feeble patrols all along the front', Trenchard responded that 'all patrols are offensive patrols and they are for the purpose of seeking out and bringing the enemy to fight'. The Jagdstaffeln opposing the British were gradually worn down, and in the last eighteen months of the war, the German air service, like its parent army, suffered a slow loss of fighting efficiency in the face of a relentless battering. The limitations of British air doctrine were ultimately to blame for the extreme length of the RFC’s casualty list.
