Trenchard: Father of the Royal Air Force

Miller has an engaging writing style. Unlike some authors who want to show off their research and fill the pages with excruciating detail on the sideline ephemera, Miller sticks to the point and gets on with the job. I read this quickly *and* wanted to know what happened next.I think it’s fair to say that Trenchard may well have been very wearing in real life. Loud, able to quickly identify a problem / solution and see it dealt equally quickly with, sometimes bluntly to the point yet at other times tongue-tied because the idea bit of the brain’s going faster than the speech bit of the brain, there are both good points in the decisiveness and problem-solving, but bad points in the people skills. The mixed and mangled metaphors, p327-8, are just brilliant !I am keeping it to myself which medical condition Trenchard appears to be blatantly suffering from, just in case I ever get around to doing some proper research again, but it is noticeable how the same things keep coming up over and over again in his contemporaries’ descriptions of him.What also comes out is the irony of the politicians’ reluctance to commit money, therefore equipment and aircraft, and people on the grounds of concerns about losses which actually leads to *greater* losses because a), people aren’t rained enough, b) their equipment’s of low standard, and c) there aren’t enough to make a decisive blow / effect and so prolong the war. One is left to wonder a) how many fewer would have died if there were enough so they could be properly trained rather than rushed into battle, b) time / money / effort had been spent on developing better aircraft, c) these aircraft had then been actually built and delivered, and d) there were enough to tip the balance.In the same way that Britain built battleships rather than sticking up pre-war on machine guns, the RNAS gets the aircraft and people, but the RAF doesn’t. And it was not for want of trying. This is an occaison when ‘donkey’ better suits comfortable frock coats back home in a different country, not brass hats at the front desperately trying to get the job done while also dealing with asininely stubborn, parsimonious, teflon-coated politicians.These same politicians then want reprisals against Germans, eg p176, p227, p230 when Lloyd George wants a raid on Mannheim, despite the moral dubiousness of the strategy and target, and more importantly because no British plane has the range to get there. Duh ! This, yet again, deprives the front of valuable resources for yet another under-achieving sideshow (see above for how this makes it worse).Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose. Under-prepared for WW2, TSR-2, Nimrods AEW.3 and MR.4, and the destruction of a perfectly capable, just been updated, Harrier fleet anyone ? After the war, the British aircraft are destroyed, only for loads of time, money and effort to be spent re-building the force, rather than ‘bumping’ old aircraft into training schools, or selling them off, p241 et seq.On p249 we get a short story about how Frank Whittle almost never made it into the RAF ...There are one or two problems with the book, for example, p90, the Farman Longhorn Biplane is described as being called so because of the prominent frontal elevator, designed to stop it tipping forwards on a right landing. No, 1) there’s only one elevator so there’s not need for the plural, 2) the elevator doesn’t perform that function, 3) it’s the elevator *supports* that function also as skids that stop it tipping forwards. This is an easily solved research issue, and is a surprisingly lax moment.Overall, this is a belting read, it really needs to be on A-level reading lists, and could do with being batted around the heads of all politicians while making sure they learn the right lesson: any chance the British could actually have enough machinery, personnel and budget for a military that is fit for purpose, please ? (Quite why anyone thinks ISIS want to sit down and talk about it, I don’t know ...)

This book is a well written account of an amazing life. Trenchard comes across as a man unaware of his own brilliance. I applaud the author for making such a complex character and a description of a long and complex career so readable.

This long overdue modern biography of Trenchard is a wonderful read. It's stuffed full of illuminating anecdotes and is a sympathetic look at the man who inspired thousands but struggled to communicate effectively with his own personal staff. There's a good deal of nuance added to the familiar stereotype of the aloof, irascible military leader that goes a long way to explaining why we should give men like Trenchard the benefit of the doubt when we judge our war leaders. I read this biography not long before studying the Trenchard archive at the RAF Museum and it's a good companion that adds insight to the personal papers.

A highly readable book about a remarkable man who, by fighting to keep the RAF from being re-absorbed into the army and navy after WW1, effectively enabled it to win the Battle of Britain and play a significant part in winning WW2. Brilliant book.

NB the illustrations are at the end of the book. I nearly missed them because you are dumped into a review page before you reach them!!!

An enthralling read which brought the illusive character of 'Boom' to life and gave an insight into what the man was really like away from his public image. Thoroughly recommended.

Very satisfied with the book - thank you.

Excellent read. A life well lived and well told.

While it surely does not replace the definitive biography by Boyle, (TRENCHARD, 1962), Miller provides a very readable biography of the "father" (Trenchard hated that title) of the Royal Air Force, melding the man's public and private lives. Trenchard was far from an easy man to work with (or even understand--he was all but inarticulate in speech or writing), yet he played a central role in Britain's early military use of aviation. Without him, it's hard to see how the RAF would have survived the administrative infighting with the army and Royal Navy, let alone budget battles. When he moved on in 1929, the service was on a fir foundation, even if it focused too much on bombing rather than air defense (a Trenchard bias).