Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard
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Bust depicting Marshal of the Royal Air Force the Viscount Trenchard |
Marshal of the Royal Air Force
Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard GCB OM GCVO DSO (
February 3,
1873 -
February 10,
1956) was the
British Chief of the Air Staff during
World War I, and was instrumental in establishing the
Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Trenchard
Aircraft Appprentice scheme (The Trenchard Brats). He is recognised today as one of the first advocates of military
strategic bombing.
Hugh Montague Trenchard was born in
Taunton,
England on
February 3, 1873. At the age of twenty, he was commissioned into the
Royal Scots Fusiliers and served in the
South African War and later in
Nigeria. He was often known by the nickname "Boom" Trenchard, for his distinctly loud speaking voice.
In
1913 he learned to fly at
Thomas Sopwith's flying school at
Brooklands. At age 39 he was just short of 40, the maximum age for military student pilots. According to his instructor, "he would never have made a good pilot" but "he was a model pupil." After passing his course, he transferred to the
Royal Flying Corps (RFC) as second in command of the Central Flying School. In November
1915, Trenchard was sent to France to command the newly formed First Wing. This consisted of Nos
2 and
3 Squadrons and flew in support of the Fourth Army Corps and the Indian Corps.
In August
1917 he agreed to return to Britain and re-organise training with
Robert Smith-Barry at a new school at
Gosport. The curriculum combined classroom training and dual flight instruction. Students were not led away from potentially dangerous manoeuvres but deliberately exposed to them in controlled environments so they could learn to recover from errors of judgement.
The Air Council was formed in January
1918, and Trenchard became Chief of the Air Staff. He helped establish the RAF in April 1918 when the RFC was merged with the
Royal Naval Air Service, but he resigned two weeks before its inauguration after a quarrel with the
Air Secretary,
Lord Rothermere.
Returning to active duty, Major-General Trenchard began in June 1918 to organize intensive strategic bombing attacks on German railways, airfields and industrial centres. These attacks used the RAF's
55 & No. 100 Squadron RAF|100]] squadrons as part of the
Independent Air Force based near
Nancy, France, and continued until the end of the war.
Trenchard returned as Chief of the Air Staff in
1919 under
Winston Churchill, and remained until retiring in
1929.
On
17 July 1920,
Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard married Katherine Boyle, the widow of James Boyle, son of the
Earl of Glasgow, at
St. Margaret's Church in
Westminster.
After the war, the RAF was budgeted to shrink from over 250 to 25 squadrons. Against this background of demobilisation and continued savage budget cuts, Trenchard fought to keep the air force separate from the
British Army and the
Royal Navy, and built the basis for a much larger organisation whose time would come in
1940.
Trenchard showed the effectiveness of strategic bombing for colonial
counter-insurgency by 1920's operations in
Somaliland and
Iraq, when poison gas was used against the rebels. In early 1920, he wrote that the RAF could even suppress "industrial disturbances or risings" in England itself; see
this article. Churchill told him not to refer to this proposal again, but by
World War II strategic bombing had become standard military doctrine.
In
1927, he became the first person to hold the highest RAF rank of
Marshal of the Royal Air Force.
In
1930 he entered the
House of Lords as Baron Trenchard (upgraded to
Viscount Trenchard in 1936), and was appointed
commissioner of the
Metropolitan Police. Trenchard carried important police reforms and established the Police College at
Hendon.
He died on
February 10, 1956.
When visiting airfields during WW2, Trenchard liked to pick a pilot and ask him what his RAF service number was. When the pilot would ask him back what his number was Trenchard delighted in telling him "1"
All seven of Trenchard's sons died in the Second World War.
Trenchard's actions in gaining status for the RAF as a separate military branch were highly influential to U.S. General Billy Mitchell. Mitchell would eventually be court-martialled for insubordination in his efforts to create a U.S. Air Force.
A Thousand Shall Fall Peden, Murray (Stoddart) 1979
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Air of Authority - A History of RAF Organisation - MRAF Trenchard
