ABSTRACT
The dominant problem for the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the early postwar era was whether it would in fact survive as an independent service. We have thus returned to the topic of interservice rivalry and it is time to show specifically how this rivalry and the parallel struggle by the RAF to maintain its independence helped prompt the development of its interwar aerial doctrine. Given the common opinion of the day that civil and military aerial developments were inextricably linked, this enactment was thoroughly logical. The official study of the strategic air war against Germany in Second World War includes the observation that strategic bombing was the rationale for the birth and continued independence of the Royal Air Force. The Chief of the Air Staff Trenchard article was concerned with the early postwar problems of the fledgling service such as organisation, recruitment and training.
