The Air Ministry is created
On 2 January 1918, at a meeting of the Privy Council at Buckingham Palace, Lord Rothermere, the press magnate and brother of Lord Northcliffe, took the oath as one of His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State. Thus the first air minister appeared in the British government. The same day the King issued a second order in council under the Air Force Act. It fixed the day on which the Air Council would begin to operate as 3 January 1918. Both instruments were published in the London Gazette of 4 January.
Amendments to the Council’s composition
The order of 2 January did more than set the date. It also amended the order of 21 December, which had laid down the composition and division of work of the Air Council. The President of the Council, that is Rothermere, could now appoint one of its two additional members as vice-president. The post went to General David Henderson, the first commander of the Royal Flying Corps. On the other hand, the Inspector-General of the air forces was struck off the list of members responsible for organisation and supply. These matters were to be dealt with only by the Chief of the Air Staff, the Master-General of Personnel and the Controller-General of Equipment.
The end of the Air Board
On 3 January the Air Council took over the duties of the Air Board. The Board had operated since May 1916, first under the presidency of Lord Curzon and from the beginning of 1917 under Lord Cowdray. It could, however, only coordinate the work of the Admiralty and the War Office, and had no authority over personnel or operations. Now for the first time a single department, answerable to Parliament, was to administer the whole of the country’s military aviation and its defence against air raids. From the outset this department was called the Air Ministry. It occupied the building of the Hotel Cecil on London’s Strand, where the Air Board had previously worked. With the creation of the ministry the post of Director-General of Military Aeronautics on the Army Council disappeared. The construction of aircraft and engines, however, remained with the Ministry of Munitions, and its Director-General of Aircraft Production, the industrialist William Weir, sat on the Council.
What next
For the time being only the ministry and its leadership existed. The Royal Flying Corps still belonged to the army, and the Royal Naval Air Service to the navy. The Council’s most important task was to prepare their merger into a single independent armed service: many thousands of men had to be transferred to the new force, and ranks, uniforms and disciplinary regulations had to be settled. The new force, the Royal Air Force, came into being on 1 April 1918. From the start it was also burdened by a clash of personalities: the Chief of the Air Staff, General Hugh Trenchard, took up his work at the ministry only in mid-January and soon began to quarrel with Rothermere over how the new force should be run.
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Meanwhile
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Related events
(04)The same battle, people or subject.
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