Some of the most senior commanders of the Royal Air Force are already well-known and have received considerable attention from historians and biographers. Little, however, has been written about most of those who have held the highest appointment the Service has to offer. The 22 biographies in this book include all 19 past Chiefs of the 3 Air Staff and three other very senior commanders. Drawn from a wide cross-section of the nation's talent, their varied careers reflect the history of the Service itself, in war-time as well as in peace-time.

The command and control of military operations is a difficult art. The Challenges of High Command explores British ideas of how this should be done and, with the guidance of some of Britain's leading military historians, looks at the practicalities of British experience in the First and Second World Wars. The contributors cast new light on themes as diverse as the trench warfare of the First World War, the conduct of the Gallipoli and Norway campaigns, and the command performance of Bomber Harris and Bill Slim. The Challenges of High Command concludes with a major review of how military operations should be conducted in the new political and technological conditions of today and includes an informal and frank commentary by General Sir Mike Jackson on his experience in Bosnia and Kosovo.

This book offers a fresh approach to the debate on the RAF's bomber offensive by using modern strategic leadership theory as an analytical tool to examine the campaign. In particular, it looks at the legality and legitimacy of the offensive and explores the key interfaces between the military leaders, the politicians and allies. It also looks at the major controversies in the aims and objectives of the campaign and the personalities involved. Modern literature from the leadership field is used to consider the challenges facing those charged with the formulation and execution of the offensive. Aspects of the senior leadership disputes are also dealt with in the context of the leadership literature and in the wider context of the strategic challenges then facing Churchill, Sinclair and Portal. A multi-disciplinary bent to the book enables the reader to move beyond the narrow confines of military considerations to the thorough investigation of the legality, legitimacy and morality of the offensive.

Hugh Dowding may be described as the prime architect of British victory in the battle of Britain, and thus as one of a handful of officers and men most responsible for ensuring that Hitler's planned invasion of England never occurred. Dowding was born in 1882 at the apex of British imperial power and had an early career as a gunner on the fabled North-West Frontier of the British Indian Empire. During the first year of World War I, he served with distinction as a combat pilot in France, but his real test would come in 1936, when he was assigned the critical task of reorganizing the Air Defense of Great Britain as the first air officer commanding-in-chief of the new RAF Fighter Command. In that capacity he stood up to senior staff--and Winston Churchill--by preventing the dismantling of British air defenses during the Battle of France in the spring of 1940, defying pressure from the British Army, Britain's French allies, and His Majesty's Government to send the bulk of the RAF's front-line fighters to the Continent in what Dowding predicted would be a futile effort to stem the German onslaught. While holding back as many of his best fighter aircraft as he could, in June Dowding deployed 11 Group under his hand-picked lieutenant, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, to repulse the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk, covering the evacuation of some 338,000 British and French troops from the Continent. During the three months of fighting known as the Battle of Britain, the integrated air defense system organized and trained by Dowding fought the vaunted Luftwaffe to a standstill in daylight air-to-air combat. In October, the Germans abandoned their attempt to win a decisive battle for air superiority over England, turning instead to the protracted campaign of attrition by nighttime area bombing known as the Blitz. In building, defending, and overseeing the operations of Fighter Command, Dowding was thus not only one of the master builders of air power, but also the only airman to have been the winning commander in one of history's decisive battles.

Royal Air Force Coastal Command was the organisation charged with keeping the sea lanes clear around the coasts of Britain for the best part of half a century, from immediately after the First World War until the 1960s. In the decades after the Second World War, John Campbell served as a Coastal Command navigator and crew captain on Shackleton aircraft in the Maritime Patrol role. Having studied in great detail the history and development of Coastal Command, he has researched and written this thorough account of its activities throughout its years of operation.

Long before the start of the Second World War it had been believed that strategic bombing would be the deciding factor in any future conflict. Then Hitler launched the Blitzkrieg upon France and the Low Countries in 1940, and the much-vaunted French Army and the British Expeditionary Force were swept away in just six weeks.This new form of warfare shook the Air Ministry, but the expected invasion never came and the Battle of Britain was fought in the air. It seemed that air forces operating independently could determine the course of the war. An Army scarcely seemed necessary for the defence of the UK and no British army could ever be powerful enough to mount an invasion of Europe on its own. Bombing Germany into defeat seemed Britain's only option. In North Africa, however, Commonwealth armies and air forces were demonstrating that they too could use blitzkrieg tactics to crush opponents. Britain was also no longer alone; Greece and then the Soviet Union joined the fight.RAF on the Offensive describes how British air power developed after the Battle of Britain. Attitudes were beginning to change – the fighter, rather than the bomber, was re-emerging as the principal means of gaining air superiority. As 1941 drew to a close, the strategic air offensive appeared to be achieving little and conventional land warfare seemed poised to replace it as the way to defeat the enemy. Which direction, then, would the war take?

In The Rise of the Bomber: RAF-Army Planning 1919 to Munich 1938, the second book in the series, author Greg Baughen uses archive material to reassess British air policy in the inter-war years. Gone is the image of a Royal Air Force starved of funds and struggling for survival against a bullying Army and Navy. Instead, Baughen describes how the Air Force set out to replace both the Army and Navy. It blocked the development of a modern air/tank strategy and won government backing for a defence policy built around the bomber the first weapon of mass destruction. Yet the time and money invested in the policy achieved nothing. When put to the test in 1938, the equipment proved inadequate and the strategy flawed. The Air Staff had misled the government, deceived itself and left the country defenceless. Yet, all was not lost. Unintentionally, the Air Ministry had been creating the aircraft that might still save the country...

The incredible true story of Air Marshal Sir George Robert Beamish, KCB, CBE - a man who played rugby for Ireland and the British & Irish Lions before becoming a leading light of the RAF during the Second World War, and a senior commander in the years following the war.

In 1945 it was announced that Allied airmen who had taken part in the Battle of Britain in 1940 would be entitled to the immediate award of the 1939-1945 Star, with Battle of Britain Clasp. This was the only Clasp awarded with the 1939-1945 Star.In the following years holders of the Clasp held informal get-togethers. In 1958 the Battle of Britain Fighter Association (BBFA) was formed, with full membership only available to holders of the Battle of Britain Clasp. Lord Dowding was the first President. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother became Patron. That post is now held by HRH The Prince of Wales.As well as organising reunions and providing some welfare assistance to members and widows, the Association has played a key role in researching entitlement to the Clasp and pronouncing on claims for the Clasp. A considerable part of the knowledge existing today on these matters came from the work of successive BBFA archivists, the late Group Captain Tom Gleave and the late Wing Commander John Young.The Association has also become closely associated with the Battle of Britain thanksgiving service held every September in Westminster Abbey.The Association's archives are held in part by the Secretary of the BBFA, Group Captain Patrick Tootal and in part by the Air Historical Branch, RAF (AHB) at RAF Northolt.Geoff Simpson has now been invited by the Association to use these archives as the basis of a book on the history of the organisation.