The Royal Air Force

Extract

There is one point which I wish to make right away because I believe it to be true, important and appropriate to this lecture which is given in memory of a great aircraft designer. Raleigh, the author of the First Volume of The War in the Air wrote: “The man who makes a machine and the man who flies it are the heroes of the epic of flight”. This sentiment I fully support and I take no exception to the fact that the “maker” takes precedence over the “flier” since, apart from any other consideration, this represents a convenient sequence of events. Putting Raleigh's statement another way, I would say that such success as the Royal Air Force has had over the years has been dependent more on the British Aircraft Industry than on any other single factor except perhaps the existence of Trenchard who, incidentally, was himself wholly alive to the importance of a healthy aircraft industry if we were to have a healthy Air Force.