Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard

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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 Apprentice 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. He was notoriously bad at passing exams and was turned away from Dartmouth Naval College (Royal Navy) and Woolwich Academy (Army). Trenchard only succeeded on entering the Army after scraping a pass on his third attempt at passing the entrance exams. However, in 1893 at the age of twenty, he was commissioned into the Royal Scots Fusiliers and served in the South African War where he was found to be an excellent horseman. A gunshot wound received in action in October 1900 punctured his lung and grazed his spine resulting in Trenchard being invalided home where he could only walk with the aid of sticks. During the winter of 1900, Trenchard emarked on a convalesent trip to St Moritz in Switzerland where the air was hoped to be beneficial to his lungs. Boredom saw him take up bobsleighing and during a heavy crash from the Cresta Run his spine was jolted back into line, enabling him to walk freely once more. Subsequently Trenchard returned to South Africa in May 1901. Post Boer War, Trenchard saw service in Nigeria as the assistant commander of the South Nigeria Regiment. His service here saw him appointed to the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1906.

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 (which cost £75 and involved a meagre two-and-a-half weeks tuition and a grand total of 64 minutes in the air), he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) as second in command of the Central Flying School. It was here that Trenchard earned his nickname "Boom" Trenchard, for his distinctly loud speaking voice. 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 and 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 Britain 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 of Wolfeton 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.

[edit] Trivia

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"

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.

[edit] References

• A Thousand Shall Fall Peden, Murray (Stoddart) 1979

• Vincent Orange, ‘Trenchard, Hugh Montague, first Viscount Trenchard (1873–1956)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006

• Probert, H. (1991). High Commanders of the Royal Air Force. HMSO. ISBN 0-11-772635-4

[edit] External links

• Air of Authority - A History of RAF Organisation - MRAF Trenchard
• USAF Assoc. Magazine

Military Offices
Preceded by: New Creation	Chief of the Air Staff 1918	Succeeded by: Sir Frederick Sykes
Preceded by: Sir Frederick Sykes	Chief of the Air Staff 1919–1930	Succeeded by: Sir John Salmond
Police Appointments
Preceded by: The Viscount Byng of Vimy	Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis 1931–1935	Succeeded by: Sir Philip Game
Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: New Creation	Viscount Trenchard 1936–1956	Succeeded by: Thomas Trenchard