Classic Lecture Series: Observations on the First Fifty Years of the R.A.F. by AM Sir Victor Goddard

In his insider’s history of the first fifty years of the R.A.F., Sir Victor Goddard gives insights into the forces and personalities that formed and developed the RAF and made it into an equal partner with the other two armed services. Sir Victor’s career covered the pioneering years of service aviation; from a cadet in 1912 who co-presented to the Admiralty a scheme for an aircraft bombsight to a seat on the Air Council and a role contributing to the Berlin Airlift. From this insider’s view he gave his audience picture of the forces and personalities that formed and developed the RAF. He considers the founding belief that the RAF needed to be formed in order for air warfare to escape the prejudices of sea and land, how Trenchard moulded the embryo service over a five year period, the decline of airships and how the service came of age during the campaigns against Mesopotamia, Iraq, Aden and against the “Mad Mullah” in Somaliland, where the RAF was able to frustrate the resources of adversaries. Sir Victor also discusses the RAF’s sometime slow harnessing of technology, including the adoption of monoplanes and radar, and tells stories of how he helped to frustrate the development of the German bomber force, his part in helping the RAF to adopt and then use Barnes Wallis’s bombs during the World War II and how he just managed to avoid a court martial after allowing the first use of a parachute to escape an aircraft. The lecture was delivered to the Royal Aeronautical Society's Historical Group on 19 April 1964. The podcast was edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS and it was digitised thanks to a grant from the Royal Aeronautical Society Foundation.