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CHAPTER TWO
The Lead-in to War, 1934 - 1939
The legacy of Trenchard‟s doctrine, with its concentration on the offensive
use of air power in the defence of the UK and the means to provide control
over the more recalcitrant subjects of His Majesty‟s Empire, remained long
after the great man had retired as CAS in 1929. Having been advised by the
Air Staff in 1925 that there was no known defence against air attack, the
Government placed an increasing reliance on universal disarmament and the
League of Nations 1 as instruments of international security. These two
factors combined to bring about a malaise within the Country‟s military and
political leadership. Bombing was not defendable, and the only means by
which Great Britain could protect itself was by massive retaliation against a
potential enemy. This policy, sometimes referred to as the „Knockout
Blow,‟ was to feature prominently in Air Staff and Government thinking
throughout the 1930s, and was the reason for the allocation of the AAF to
the bombing role. In 1932 this policy was further reinforced by Stanley
Baldwin‟s oft quoted statement „the bomber will always get through‟, 2 and
the subsequent collapse of the Geneva World Disarmament Conference in
November 1934, which had attempted to eliminate bombing aeroplanes
from the world‟s air forces. The legacy of the Conference, as far as Britain
was concerned, was to impede the implementation of the Fifty-Two
Squadron Plan. By March 1932 the Plan had delivered forty-two squadrons,
for Home Defence, roughly in the proportion of two thirds bombers to one
third fighters. Since Ramsey MacDonald‟s Government had no wish to
prejudice the negotiations at Geneva with talk of expanding the UK‟s
defences, implementation of the full Plan was further postponed in June
1933.
The unintentional halt in the modernisation of the defences would have
mattered little had it not been for the emergence in 1933 of a rearming
Germany and the covert creation of the Luftwaffe. A realisation of what the
future held in store, forced a reluctant Government to establish a committee
in November 1933 under the chairmanship of Sir Maurice Hankey, to
examine and advise on the means by which the „worst deficiencies‟ in
1 The League of Nations was founded in 1920, principally by the United States and Great
Britain, and its treaty was written into the peace treaties that ended World War One.
2 Stanley Baldwin, as Lord President of the Council, to the House of Commons, 10 th
November 1932.
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