ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the processes by which the Air Ministry and Royal Air Force (RAF) were created during mid- to late 1917 and the implications of these new organisations in terms of the control of the air. This includes a focus on UK airspace, the Western Front, the projection of air power over German and the efforts made by individuals such as Haig and Trenchard to ensure that the defeat of Germany's armed forces on the Western Front retained priority in policy and practice. Significantly, Trenchard came to occupy the post as the RAF's first professional chief and, after ignominiously resigning as the former, the commander of its independent force of strategic bombers. Leading both organisations, to which Trenchard referred respectively as a 'ghastly mistake' and as a 'gigantic waste of effort and personnel', saw Trenchard intimately connected with overseeing and delivering the shifting priorities of British air policy.
