Description

In April 2018 the RAF celebrated its first hundred years. And yet its very survival seemed highly questionable in the decade that followed the end of the First World War. The British Army and the Royal Navy, very much set in their ways, could not see the point in having a new fighting division established in their midst. Aircraft, aviation and flying were interesting, but not in the sphere of national defence or conflict. It too the efforts of far-sighted and practical men to convince their superiors that military aviation had a future. The fate of the British aircraft industry hung in the balance too in the mid-1920s. Civil aviation was swamped by ex-war machines and there was limited demand for new ones for the fledgling RAF. New aircraft were few and far between and manufacturers had to submit design prototypes for evaluation. This costly quest for orders kept our aircraft industry on the breadline for many years until the 1930s when the reality of coming war loomed. This book charts the survival of the RAF and the industry that supported it in those difficult between the wars years.  259 illustrations.