Kennedy G. Imperial Defence. The Old World Order, 1856-1956

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forces was a low priority, and for most of the interwar period, the dominion

air forces were mere training cadres and not in any position to support the

RAF in imperial operations.

The RAF did, however, establish a programme

to bring dominion air force ofﬁcers with short-service commissions into the

RAF. After ﬂight training and experience with RAF units, they would return

to their own air forces. It was a simple and inexpensive means to keep the

dominion air forces closely linked to the RAF.

By the mid-1930s, with Hitler swiftly rearming Germany and moving

towards an alliance with Italy, and a rapidly modernizing Japan becoming

openly aggressive, the threats to British and Commonwealth security

became acute. While Britain initiated a major aerial rearmament pro-

gramme, the Commonwealth nations were generally reluctant to rearm

and build up their air forces. In 1936, Air Commodore Arthur Tedder, the

then chief of training for the RAF, authored a memo that proposed a

scheme to set up an aircrew training programme for Commonwealth air

force personnel in Canada and other Commonwealth nations. This sensi-

ble proposal did not ﬁnd favour with Canadian Prime Minister King, who

was reluctant to involve Canada in any imperial defence schemes.

Tedder’s proposal, which later developed into the incredibly successful

British Commonwealth Air Training Plan of the Second World War, was

ﬁnally approved by the Commonwealth nations in April 1939, with train-

ing to begin in September 1939.

Of all the Commonwealth nations, only Australia made any serious

attempt to build up its air force. The rise of an aggressive and militant

Japan forced Australia to begin to rearm and to initiate closer defence

cooperation with Britain. Japan’s withdrawal in 1934 from the limits of the

Washington Naval Agreements, the rapid growth of the Japanese armed

forces and the brutal invasion of China in 1937 made the Japanese threat

very clear to the Paciﬁc Ocean powers. In 1937, the British Government

promised that a powerful RN ﬂeet would be dispatched to Singapore

immediately if the Japanese threatened to move south.

However sincere

the British pledge to defend the Paciﬁc dominions, the Australians under-

stood that European and home defence would be Britain’s top priority

and British resources might not be adequate to deal with simultaneous

conﬂicts in Europe and the Paciﬁc. With the British aircraft industry in

the throes of rearmament, the Australians accurately predicted that

Britain would not be able to supply adequate numbers of aircraft for a

rapidly growing Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). To provide for their

own requirements, the Australians created their own aircraft manufactur-

ing company, the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) in 1936.

Furthermore, the CAC decided that its ﬁrst production airplane would

not be British but rather a version of the North American NA-33 trainer.

Turning to the Americans for aircraft was another indication of Aus-

tralia’s lack of conﬁdence that Britain could uphold her vast imperial

defence commitments. The Australian assessment was correct. From 1936

162 J.S. Corum

to 1941, British industry was unable to manufacture adequate numbers of

modern aircraft for its own forces, and unless the dominions went to

America for aircraft or produced their own, they would be stuck with

whatever obsolete aircraft that the RAF could spare them. By 1938, the

Australians saw the situation as acute as the RAAF’s primary ﬁghters were

then obsolete open-cockpit Bristol Bulldog and Hawker Demon biplanes.

Upset at the slow pace of delivery of British aircraft, the Australians turned

to the Americans with an order for 50 Lockheed Hudsons to serve as

modern reconnaissance-bomber planes.

As the crisis in the Paciﬁc wors-

ened, Australia turned increasingly to an informal alliance with America

in Paciﬁc defence planning and ordered increasing numbers of aircraft

from the US. In 1941, Australia began receiving aircraft under the Amer-

ican Lend-Lease programme as its air force expanded. Although Australia,

like all the Western powers, was unprepared to meet the Japanese

onslaught in 1941 and suffered initial sharp reverses, the build up of the

RAAF had progressed to the point that it recovered quickly. Through

1942 and 1943, the RAAF, rapidly growing in size and effectiveness, played

an important role in stopping the Japanese and turning the tide in New

Guinea and the South Paciﬁc theatres. Credit for this accomplishment lies

with the foundations for aerial rearmament laid down in the 1930s.

Another notably missed opportunity to develop imperial airpower was

the failure to develop an Indian air force. In 1932, the Government of

India established an air force that consisted of a ﬂight of army coopera-

tion biplanes. However, the Indian Government had little interest in

developing an air force, and by 1939, the Indian Air Force consisted of a

single squadron of obsolete Wapiti biplanes with a manning of 16 ofﬁcers

and 662 men. Two years later, at the outbreak of the Paciﬁc War, the

Indian Air Force was able to contribute only a small detachment of obso-

lete army cooperation aircraft to participate in the Allied debacle in

Burma. The Government of India had ample ﬁnancial resources to have

created a modern and balanced air force, at least capable of defending

Indian borders and vital bases. The Indian Government’s lack of interest

in airpower meant that India was virtually defenceless in the air against

Japanese attacks in 1942.

From small beginnings, the imperial and Commonwealth contribution

to the Allied air effort in the Second World War was substantial. During the

war, the Commonwealth nations developed large and capable air forces

under their own command and also contributed tens of thousands of

aircrew to man the RAF’s squadrons. The Commonwealth Air Training

Plan was one of the most successful of the wartime programmes, and it

played a decisive role in winning air superiority for the Allies. Canada and

Australia also became important aircraft manufacturing centres. However,

the ﬁrst half of the war was a bleak period for the RAF and Commonwealth

air forces because of the very weak efforts to build a Commonwealth and

imperial foundation for airpower in the 1920s and 1930s.

The RAF in imperial defence 163

The RAF and the empire after the Second World War

The outlook for Britain and the empire in the period right after the

Second World War was, in many respects, more difﬁcult than the post-

First World War era. For one thing, the exertions of the Second World

War had strained Britain’s ﬁnancial and economic resources to the

maximum, and the need to demobilize the wartime armed forces and cut

imperial defence expenditures was urgent. At the same time, all of the

colonial powers faced a powerful wave of nationalism. Nationalist groups

in Europe’s Asian and Middle Eastern colonies were considerably better

organized than before the Second World War. In a devastated Western

Europe, Britain and the US faced an aggressive and well-armed Soviet

Union that was eager to exploit every opportunity to expand communist

inﬂuence. In Greece, where thousands of British troops tried to maintain

order and support the Greek Government, the Cold War turned hot as a

powerful communist insurgency was supported by the Soviets through

Yugoslavia.

The new strategic realities required a complete reassessment of

Britain’s empire and Britain’s role as a world power. In military and stra-

tegic terms, Britain had been eclipsed by the US and was now in the posi-

tion of a junior partner, dependent on American loans and aid to adjust

to the post-war economy. The positive side was that the US no longer

remained aloof from European affairs and was willing to assume a major

role in defending Western Europe and to work with Britain to contain

communism in Greece. With Germany and Japan defeated and facing

only a small Soviet navy, there was now little reason to maintain a large

RN. The strategic relationship with the dominions had also changed. By

1945, Canada and Australia had become signiﬁcant military powers in

their own right, and the new realities began to change the nature of impe-

rial relationships before the war had ended. During the Second World

War, the US, whose navy was now vastly larger than the RN, assumed

responsibility for the defence of Australia and New Zealand, and this rela-

tionship was formalized by agreements after the war.

The development of the atomic bomb during the Second World War

was an issue that could not be ignored in post-war strategic planning. With

or without American help, Britain decided that it would maintain its great

power status by developing its own nuclear weapons. As the RAF had

created a superb strategic bombing force during the war, it was the logical

force to deliver nuclear weapons. Because it was assumed that the next war

might come quickly and with little warning, the only force that could

respond with appropriate speed was the RAF. So the RAF, the Cinderella

service before the war, eclipsed the RN as Britain’s ﬁrst line of defence and

became the primary military means of containing the Soviet Union. Devel-

oping new jet aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons became a top

priority for defence research and development after the war. Despite the

164 J.S. Corum

protests of the RN, the battle ﬂeet that had been the pride of the armed

forces was now replaced by the RAF’s strategic bomber force in the budget

planning for Britain’s defence requirements.

In ﬁnancial terms, the empire had become, for the most part, an

enormous liability after 1945. The military cost of British home defence

and imperial commitments in a disorderly post-war world were enormous.

In 1946–1947, the British armed forces budget was £1,091 million and

took up 15 per cent of Britain’s GNP. The chancellor called for drastic

cuts in the defence budget with a goal of spending £750 million in

1947–1948.

The cost of maintaining large imperial garrisons was well

beyond Britain’s capability, and in early 1946, the government took the

painful but necessary decision to grant independence to India, Ceylon

and Burma no later than 1948.

The ﬁrst post-war imperial problem for Britain’s armed forces was to re-

establish British and Western rule in colonies that had been overrun and

occupied by the Japanese in 1941–1942. Since Southeast Asia was primarily a

British theatre of war, large British and Commonwealth forces were engaged

in reoccupation of Malaya, the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina.

The reoccupation of Malaya had been carefully planned and went ahead

smoothly. In September 1945, the RAF occupied airﬁelds in Indochina

without incident. However, the British commitment to this theatre was short-

lived as the French were able to bring in forces within a few weeks. Much

more problematic was the reoccupation of the Dutch East Indies. As the

Netherlands would be unable to stand up sufﬁcient military forces to take

control of their colony until late 1946, the British had to assume respons-

ibility for securing and administering the vast Dutch Asian Empire for more

than a year. The situation was complicated by the Indonesian nationalists

declaring independence as the Japanese surrendered. This meant that the

British army and RAF had to intervene in a politically explosive situation. In

Sumatra, where the nationalists were not well organized, the reoccupation

proceeded without incident. But in Java, where the nationalists had their

primary power base, large-scale ﬁghting broke out between the British forces

and Indonesians in October–November 1945. The RAF deployed hundreds

of aircraft to Indonesia as RAF Thunderbolts, Mosquitoes and Beauﬁghters

provided close air support to British ground troops and bombed the rebel

centres of power. The heaviest combat took place in the city of Surabaya,

and RAF bombing inﬂicted heavy casualties upon the Indonesians as well as

heavy damage to the city.

The RAF support to the Dutch empire in Asia, an

ultimately futile enterprise, was one of the several signiﬁcant burdens the

RAF had to bear immediately after the Second World War.

The RAF in post-war imperial strategy

The post-war COS were ﬁrmly committed to maintaining Britain’s posi-

tion as a global world power, and to them, this implied keeping the

The RAF in imperial defence 165

empire intact. The British defence chiefs met the new post-war challenges

with a mixture of hard-headed realism, such as understanding the need to

contain the Soviet expansionism, with an often emotional response, such

as their preference to maintain the pre-war colonial system despite the

economic costs. Britain’s service chiefs all had extensive experience in

imperial operations and found it hard to conceive of a declining empire.

For example, the RAF’s post-war chief, Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder

(Chief of the Air Staff 1946–1950) had served as a squadron commander

in the Middle East in 1922–1923 and as an air ofﬁcer commanding Far

East 1936–1938. Air Chief Marshal John Slessor (Chief of the Air Staff

1950–1953) had served as a ﬂight commander in India in 1921–1923 and

as a wing commander on the North West Frontier 1936–1937. While the

Indian subcontinent was abandoned with great reluctance, the RAF and

other service chiefs continued to argue strongly for keeping a strong

imperial presence in the Middle East even though the primary strategic

reason for maintaining Middle Eastern colonies – protecting communica-

tions with India – was no longer relevant after India’s independence.

The rapidly changing post-war political conditions forced the British

service chiefs and the air staffs to jump from one basing strategy to another.

Immediately after the war, maintaining air bases in Egypt was considered to

be a strategic necessity. However, as negotiations with the Egyptians for

post-war bases were not very promising, in late 1946, the service chiefs

began to look at Palestine as a major base for British forces in the Middle

East.

In the next year, as Palestine blew up into full revolt, another series

of basing proposals were considered including stationing the RAF in Libya

and East Africa. In the interim, the Suez Canal Zone became the primary

British base in the Middle East. However, constant friction with the Egyp-

tians made that an increasingly untenable proposition. Finally, the British

service chiefs decided that Cyprus was best suited as a base location to main-

tain military and political inﬂuence in the Middle East.

Britain’s imperial military infrastructure was considerably more than

the nation could reasonably afford. Britain could afford to have a capable

air force with nuclear weapons and modern bombers or a large conven-

tional army and navy to maintain imperial inﬂuence – but not both. With

15 per cent of the British GNP devoted to military spending in 1946, the

need to cut defence spending was urgent. In early 1946, when the British

government committed itself to the development and production of

nuclear weapons, the inevitable result was a reduction of imperial military

commitments.

Development of a modern jet bomber force that could

deliver such nuclear weapons was also a complex technical undertaking

that would require years of lead time and the long-term commitment of a

large proportion of the military budget. In 1948, the RAF issued the oper-

ational requirements for a series of four-engined jet bombers, and the ﬁrst

of these, the Valiants, became operational in 1955. The Valiant bombers

would quickly be followed by the more capable Vulcans and Victors. A

166 J.S. Corum

force of 240 bombers was envisioned, and this force would form the core

of British military striking power.

After the decision for Indian independence was made in early 1946, the

desire of the military chiefs to maintain the vestiges of empire in the

Middle East was justiﬁed as part of the strategy of containing communism.

The consequences of British military withdrawal from the Middle East

were described in dire terms by RAF Chief of Staff Arthur Tedder in 1949,

‘The UK armed forces were the only stabilizing inﬂuence in areas of

immense economic consequence to the Western World.’ Tedder also

noted that withdrawal from the region ‘could hardly fail to lead to the

disintegration of the Commonwealth and the eventual fall of Africa to

communism’.

From 1946 to 1956, the primary justiﬁcation for maintain-

ing an imperial presence in the Middle East and Mediterranean was to

provide secure bases for RAF bombers able to strike the Soviet Union in

case of war. Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field-Marshal Lord Alan-

brooke, ﬁrst made this argument to the Defence Committee in April

1946.

Air Marshal Tedder further developed this argument for imperial-

ism in terms of the Anglo-American alliance. Tedder pointed out that in

case of war with the Soviets, the ﬁrst force that the US could deploy would

be its strategic bombers, and the Americans would need secure bases from

which to operate. Britain was in a position to provide such bases in the

Mediterranean and Middle East, and the British service chiefs argued for a

continued occupation of Libya and development of air bases there.

This proposal was well received by the Americans during the Anglo-

American defence conferences in late 1947. At the time, the newly formed

USAF Strategic Air Command was looking for suitable locations in the

Mediterranean and Middle East to base their heavy B-36 bombers, which

were capable of carrying nuclear weapons for long distances and the offer

of British bases was very welcome. However, with Britain pulling out of

Palestine and Egypt, Britain had few good base locations to offer the

Americans. By 1950, the Americans ﬁnalized agreements with the French

to build strategic bomber bases in Morocco, and Wheelus Field in Libya

became a US air base in the 1950s and with strategic bombers stationed

there until the late 1960s.

Partly because of a shortage of British personnel and resources, and

partly because of the close bonds forged in wartime, the post-war British

government and service chiefs were ready to share imperial responsibilities

in the Mediterranean and Middle East with the Americans. For their part,

the American military and political leadership accepted the position of

their British counterparts that Britain’s continued presence in the region

was a positive and stabilizing factor. In early 1947, citing a lack of resources,

the British government asked the Americans to take over the mission of

supporting the Greek government, at that time desperately engaged in a

civil war with the communists. In March 1947, the Americans responded

with the Truman Doctrine and quickly poured in funds, equipment and

The RAF in imperial defence 167

military advisors for the Greek armed forces. While the US military took

over the primary responsibility to support the Greeks, the RAF mission that

had been training the Royal Hellenic Air Force remained in the country

and worked alongside the Americans to create a Greek air force until the

conﬂict ended in 1950. The British/American strategic cooperation in

Greece helped accelerate the development of a collective defence strategy

that would cover all of Europe and the Mediterranean. The Greek endeav-

our was also important as the ﬁrst real victory in the struggle to contain

communism.

The enormous technological advances of the Second World War and

the high cost of the new technologies had a central bearing on the strategy

for RAF overseas basing. In the 1920s and 1930s, building RAF bases was

neither difﬁcult nor expensive. All the RAF aircraft of that era required for

operations was a relatively ﬂat and dry grass or dirt surface. Add a small

operations tower and a few simple wooden hangers and one had a fully

functioning RAF base. However, the heavy bombers developed during the

war and the new jet aircraft coming into the RAF inventory in the late

1940s required a completely different approach to building air bases. The

Lancaster bomber of the Second World War and the Lincoln heavy

bomber developed at the close of the war required long concrete runways

capable of bearing heavy loads. The new generation of jet ﬁghters and

bombers envisioned in the late 1940s required even longer runways than

the heaviest Second World War aircraft. A 1949 study by the Air Staff noted

that airﬁelds for jet bombers under development would required a load

classiﬁcation to bear aircraft weighing 180,000–200,000 lb and would have

to be 3,000 yards long and 150 yards wide with taxiways of at least 75 yards

wide. In short, existing RAF bases would have to be rebuilt in order to

operate effectively, and building any new air base would be a time-consum-

ing and expensive undertaking.

The engineering requirements alone as

well as the costs of building a minimal infrastructure for jet aircraft

required a long planning time. Even with a more generous budget, which

was not realistic under the post-war conditions, the Air Staff would now

have to think carefully about sitting each air base.

Another issue that had to be considered in establishing major air bases

was base security. With violent nationalist movements active throughout

the Middle East and Asia, RAF bases became a lucrative target for groups

trying to force the British and Western powers out of their countries. When

the British pulled out of their Egyptian bases shortly after the war and relo-

cated forces to the Suez Canal Zone, Egyptian nationalists initiated a cam-

paign of attacks against the British bases and personnel. In 1951, when the

Egyptians abrogated the 1936 Anglo/Egyptian basing treaty, the Canal

Zone faced outright insurrection with riots by Egyptians and attacks on

British convoys. Thousands of Egyptian workers at the Canal Zone’s mili-

tary bases, including most of the skilled workers, walked off the job, and

Britain could only maintain the bases by an emergency airlift of 2,000

168 J.S. Corum

technicians and tradesmen from the UK.

From that time until the ﬁnal

withdrawal of British forces from the Canal Zone in 1956, the large British

establishment in the Canal Zone was under constant threat of attack by the

Egyptians.

The hope to establish Palestine as a major post-war RAF base

of operations also ran into local violence and terrorism. Starting in January

1946, Jewish nationalists attacked RAF radar installations and depots. In

February 1946, a well-planned attack put the important radar station on

Mount Carmel out of action. A week later, Jewish terrorists attacked three

RAF bases and destroyed 20 aircraft in carefully coordinated attacks. The

RAF had to rush in reinforcements to protect the bases, and RAF ground

crew were all armed and trained for ground defence.

During the insur-

gency in Cyprus, which began in 1955 and lasted until 1959, the RAF again

became a prime target for terrorist attacks by local nationalists. In several

instances, Greek civilian employees of the RAF were able to smuggle

bombs into tightly guarded bases and destroy aircraft parked on the ﬁeld

or undergoing maintenance. Several RAF personnel were killed by terrorist

attacks carried out by Greek Cypriot nationalists. Eventually, the RAF and

British army had to bring in over 20,000 troops to deal with the insurgency

and secure the air bases which the British depended upon as their major

strategic presence in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

Brushﬁre wars and counterinsurgency operations

Although strategically and economically necessary, the slow and rather

reluctant withdrawal from empire was punctuated by considerable viol-

ence, usually in the form of nationalist insurgencies. Along with the fairly

large-scale RAF operations conducted in Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the

RAF was also required to support a large number of small operations

against insurgent movements in other colonies. The Cyprus insurgency

(1955–1959) should have been foreseen by the Colonial Ministry, and

local colonial ofﬁcials had reported on the rising tide of Greek national-

ism in Britain’s key Mediterranean colony for several years. But, as was

often the case, the situation was ignored until the shooting started. The

Greek Cypriot nationalists ﬁelded only a small insurgent force that never

numbered over 250 active ﬁghters and never assembled in large groups to

provide a good target for ground or air forces. The Cypriot insurgents did

not aim for military victory but rather to create enough trouble to weaken

the British will to stay. The Greek Cypriot insurgents conducted a cam-

paign of constant bombings, assassinations and small ambushes, and they

had the advantage of being able to melt into a Greek population that over-

whelmingly supported their efforts. As in Malaya, the RAF supported army

operations with Whirlwind and Sycamore helicopters and also employed

light aircraft for observation. But such tactics were much less effective

against small groups that employed primarily terrorist tactics and could

ﬁnd sanctuary among the civilian population.

The RAF in imperial defence 169

The remote British colony of Aden also faced a round of tribal rebellions

in 1947–1949 that required a campaign that resembled the campaigns of

the interwar era with local forces supported by RAF armoured cars tracking

the rebels and the punitive bombing of rebel villages carried out by Lincoln

heavy bombers and Tempest VI ﬁghter bombers of No. 8 Squadron.

The

Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya (1952–1955) was a major colonial military

operation but fought primarily with local troops and resources. In this case,

the major airpower contribution to defeating the guerrillas was made not by

the RAF but instead by the light civilian aircraft of the Kenya Police Reserve

Wing that ﬂew constant low-level observation patrols over the rebel regions.

As in the French colonial wars of the era, Harvard trainers modiﬁed to carry

light bombs and machine guns proved to be the most effective close strike

aircraft. In 1954, the RAF Transport Command was employed to transport

the 49th Brigade from Britain to support counterinsurgency operations. In

the later stages of the campaign, RAF Lincoln bombers relentlessly blasted

known rebel strongholds with thousands of 500-lb bombs. In this case, area

bombing seems to have had a signiﬁcant morale effect upon the already

desperate Mau Mau remnants, and the last large guerrilla groups soon sur-

rendered.

The RAF operations in the ﬁght against communist rebels in Malaya

from 1948 to 1960 stand out as a model of effective use of airpower in

counterinsurgency. In contrast to operations before the Second World

War, there was no attempt to provide an ‘air control’ solution to defeat

the insurgents. The ability of the RAF to strike targets with airpower was

largely irrelevant to the kind of war fought by the Malayan insurgents as

the rebels rarely concentrated their forces in large units or fought conven-

tional battles which would have exposed them to air strikes. It was a war of

small insurgent units, hidden in the jungle or villages, relentlessly attack-

ing the British or loyalist Malayans by means of terrorism and ambush and

small attacks. Large operations mounted by the British army early in the

campaign could search the jungle sanctuaries of the rebels for days and

rebels, organized into small units at home in the jungle, found that they

could easily evade the slow and clumsy army units. The British eventually

learned that small light infantry teams, highly trained in jungle opera-

tions, were the best force for tracking down and destroying the rebel

bands. The most notable RAF contribution to the British success in Malaya

was the RAF helicopter squadrons that enabled the light infantry and

police units to operate for days, and even weeks, deep in the jungle. The

RAF’s Sycamore and Whirlwind helicopters provided constant support in

the form of troop lift, resupply and medical evacuation for the infantry

and police. The 40 helicopters of RAF No. 3 Wing enabled the British and

Malayan army and police the ability to keep the rebels under constant

pressure.

The RAF excelled in a variety of support operations for the ground

forces. RAF Valetta and Dakota transports ﬂying into small airstrips or

170 J.S. Corum

airdropping supplies enabled the British/Malayan forces to establish and

maintain small forts in jungle and mountain regions inaccessible by road.

In short, the rebels no longer had any safe regions where they could estab-

lish bases. In addition to transport operations, RAF aircraft supported the

government’s propaganda campaign by dropping millions of leaﬂets over

the jungle urging the rebels to surrender. In a further reﬁnement of the

propaganda war, RAF Valetta transports ﬁtted out with loudspeakers ﬂew

over areas of known rebel activity broadcasting messages from former

rebels urging their comrades to accept government offers of amnesty.

Indeed, the psychological warfare programme supported by the RAF was

remarkably successful according to the many guerrillas who came in to

surrender from 1953 onwards.

In the ﬁnal reckoning, the RAF was able to provide exceptionally effect-

ive support to the ground forces in Malaya with a relatively small commit-

ment of forces. The RAF force in Malaya throughout the insurgency

amounted to little more than a hundred aircraft, and most of the aircraft

employed for reconnaissance, strike and transport were the older, piston-

engined Spitﬁres, Tempests and Dakota transports and not the RAF’s

latest jets. However, the older planes did the job well at a low operating

cost. In strategic terms, Malaya gave the British an important victory in

terms of Cold War containment strategy without detracting from the

RAF’s higher priorities of European and home defence. To this day, the

RAF operations in Malaya provide a useful example of how an air force

can effectively support a counterinsurgency campaign without undermin-

ing its primary conventional war capabilities.

The Commonwealth contribution

Despite Britain’s difﬁcult post-war strategic position, there were some very

positive developments in conducting imperial military operations. In con-

trast with the interwar period, the Commonwealth nations had emerged

from the Second World War as considerable air powers in their own

right.

Under the new post-war realities, the Commonwealth nations were

no longer interested in asserting their independence within an imperial

context as the empire was visibly in decline. Instead, the Commonwealth

nations now viewed their role in the Commonwealth more as peers than

subordinates and were politically committed to supporting collective

defence of the West. The disorder in Europe and the Middle East and

Asia, coupled with the rising threat of communism, motivated the Com-

monwealth governments to closer cooperation with Britain to support

imperial military operations.

While Canada committed ground, naval and air forces to defend

Europe, Australia took on much of the responsibility to establishing order

in post-war Asia. Australian ground forces and the RAAF reoccupied the

eastern half of the Dutch East Indies in the fall of 1945, and Australia took

The RAF in imperial defence 171