Produced by Chris Curnow, Joseph Cooper, Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR BASED ON OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS BY DIRECTION OF THE HISTORICAL SECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF IMPERIAL DEFENCE THE WAR IN THE AIR Being the Story of The part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force VOL. I BY WALTER RALEIGH OXFORD THE CLARENDON PRESS 1922 Oxford University Press _London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai_ Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY PREFACE The History of which this is the first volume is, in the main, the history of the part played in the war by British air forces. It is based chiefly on the records of the Air Ministry collected and preserved at the Historical Section. The staff of the Section have spared no trouble to collect an immense amount of material and arrange it for use, to consult living witnesses, to verify facts down to the minutest details, and to correct any errors that may have crept into the narrative. Their main purpose has been to secure that any statement of fact made in this book shall be true and demonstrable. If in any particular instances they have failed in this purpose, it has not been for lack of pains and care. Official records do not in themselves make history. They are colourless and bare. In the business of interpreting and supplementing them we have been much helped by the kindness of many military and naval officers and of many civilian experts. Their help, most of which is acknowledged in the text, has supplied us with the liveliest things in this book. We could wish that we had more of it. Naval and military officers do not advertise, and are reluctant to speak publicly of the part that they played in the war. They are silent on all that may seem to tell to their own credit or to the discredit of others, and this silence easily develops into a fixed habit of reticence. We are the more grateful to those who have helped us to a true account by telling of what they saw. The best part of the book is yet to come; if the theme is to be worthily treated, it must be by the help of those who remember and of those who know.