Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard

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Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard bigraphy, stories - Royal Flying Corps commander and first Royal Air Force Chief of the Air Staff

Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard : biography

03 February 1873 – 10 February 1956

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Hugh Montague Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard GCB OM GCVO DSO (3 February 1873 – 10 February 1956) was a British officer who was instrumental in establishing the Royal Air Force. He has been described as the Father of the Royal Air Force.

During his formative years Trenchard struggled academically, failing many examinations and only just succeeding in meeting the minimum standard for commissioned service in the British Army. As a young infantry officer, Trenchard served in India and with the outbreak of the Boer War, he volunteered for service in South Africa. Whilst fighting the Boers, Trenchard was critically wounded and as a result of his injury, he lost a lung, was partially paralysed and returned to Great Britain. On medical advice Trenchard travelled to Switzerland to recuperate and boredom saw him taking up bobsleighing. After a heavy crash, Trenchard found that his paralysis was gone and that he could walk unaided. Following further recuperation, Trenchard returned to active service in South Africa.

After the end of the Boer War, Trenchard saw service in Nigeria where he was involved in efforts to bring the interior under settled British rule and quell inter-tribal violence. During his time in West Africa, Trenchard commanded the Southern Nigeria Regiment for several years.

In 1912, Trenchard learned to fly and he was subsequently appointed as second in command of the Central Flying School. He held several senior positions in the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, serving as the commander of the Royal Flying Corps in France from 1915 to 1917. In 1918, he briefly served as the first Chief of the Air Staff before taking up command of the Independent Air Force in France. Returning as Chief of the Air Staff under Winston Churchill in 1919, Trenchard spent the following decade securing the future of the Royal Air Force. He was Metropolitan Police Commissioner in the 1930s and a defender of the RAF in his later years. Trenchard is recognized today as one of the early advocates of strategic bombing.

Later years

In the aftermath of the war, several American generals, including Henry H. Arnold and Carl Andrew Spaatz, asked Trenchard to brief them in connection with the debate which surrounded the proposed establishment of the independent United States Air Force. The American air leaders held Trenchard in high esteem and dubbed him the "patron saint of air power".Boyle 1962:p. 732 The USAF was formed as an independent branch of the American Armed Forces in 1947.

After World War II, Trenchard continued to set out his ideas about air power. He also supported the creation of two memorials. For the first, the Battle of Britain Chapel in Westminster Abbey, Trenchard headed a committee with Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding to raise funds for the furnishing of the chapel and for the provision of a stained glass window. The second, the Anglo-American Memorial to the airmen of both nations, was erected in St Paul’s Cathedral, after Trenchard’s death.Boyle 1962:pp. 732–733 In the late 1940s and early 1950s Trenchard continued his involvement with the United Africa Company, holding the chairmanship until 1953 when he resigned. From 1954, during the last two years of his life, Trenchard was partially blind and physically frail.

Trenchard died one week after his 83rd birthday at his London home in Sloane Avenue on 10 February 1956. Following his funeral at Westminster Abbey on 21 February, his ashes were buried in the Battle of Britain Chapel he helped to create. Trenchard’s viscountcy passed to his son Thomas.

Between the wars

Army mutiny in Southampton

After two months on the RAF’s inactive list, Trenchard returned to military duties in mid-January 1919 when Sir William Robertson, the Commander-in-Chief of Home Forces, asked him to take charge of around 5,000 mutinying soldiers in Southampton. Putting on his Army general’s uniform he arrived in Southampton with a staff of two, his clerk and Maurice Baring, his aide-de-camp.Boyle 1962:p. 317 Trenchard initially attempted to speak to the mutinying soldiers but was heckled and jostled. He then arranged for armed troops to be sent to Southampton and when Trenchard threatened lethal force, the mutineers surrendered, bringing matters to a close without bloodshed.Boyle 1962:pp. 320–324