Old papers, old documents, the RAF and Jan Smuts

I was having a bit of a clear out - that was the intention but, as usual, too much time spent reading things and looking at pictures to actually dispose of very much. When we left South Africa for good in the late 1970s my mother came with us and so did quite a bit of her memorabilia as she lived with us for the last few years of her life.  

We have disposed of all the little photographs of people we can’t identify and a few other bits and pieces but it is difficult to let go.  My children are very welcome to throw it all out when I have departed but I can’t.  

Amongst all the papers are some relating to her father’s military service, his early career and then retirement.  Born in the East End of London he served in WW1, enlisting in 2016 and ended up as a rigger in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) which was the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers, under the control of the British Army. 

He was however, demobbed from the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF) at the end of the war after the RFC had merged with the Royal Naval Air Service.

The RAF is the world's oldest independent air force: that is, the first air force to become independent of army or navy control. There is a particular South African interest in this as General Jan Smuts (subsequently twice Prime Minister of South Africa) was largely instrumental in its formation.  

Smuts was invited by the then British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, to join the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 and served until 1919. Lloyd George commissioned Smuts to report on two issues the second of which was air organisation generally and the direction of aerial operations.  Smuts reported: “the day may not be far off when aerial operations with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centres on a vast scale may become the principal operations of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate”. How prescient!

Given this new dimension he commented that it was important that the design of aircraft and engines for such operations should be settled in accordance with the policy which would direct their future strategic use. On this basis he recommended that an Air Ministry should be created which should supervise the merger of the two air services. This was accepted and Smuts was then asked to lead an Air Organisation Committee to put it into effect. This received Royal Assent from the King on November 29 1917. 

It is worth following the link below and reading about Smuts: an extraordinary intellect and career from very inauspicious beginnings.  His politics must be viewed of their time – certainly many of his beliefs sit uncomfortably today.  

Jan Smuts was the only person to sign both of the peace treaties ending both WWI and WWII. One wonders if his advice had been followed after the first war whether Germany would have followed the path it did.  

My father, a surgeon, gleefully told the following story many times. He volunteered to serve at the start of WWII (there was no conscription in South Africa and it was not a foregone conclusion that the government would join the Allies – see South Africa's entry into WWII ). He was initially stationed at what was then Roberts Heights, subsequently Voortrekker Hoogte, just outside Pretoria (the administrative capital of SA). One evening his commanding officer instructed him to go and see Prime Minister Smuts at the official residence in Pretoria.  On arrival the secretary apologised that the PM was running late.  She asked if there was anything he wanted and he asked to make a telephone call.  She indicated the chair behind the PMs desk and said to go ahead.  He then called my mother and said “You’ll never guess where I am sitting…..”